Thursday, March 21, 2013

mocking bird

Part
One

Chapter
1

When
he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at
the elbow. When it healed, and Jem’s fears of never being able to
play football were assuaged, he was seldom self-conscious about his
injury. His left arm was somewhat shorter than his right; when he
stood or walked, the back of his hand was at right angles to his
body, his thumb parallel to his thigh. He couldn’t have cared less,
so long as he could pass and punt. When enough years had gone by to
enable us to look back on them, we sometimes discussed the events
leading to his accident. I maintain that the Ewells started it all,
but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before
that. He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first
gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out. I said if he wanted
to take a broad view of the thing, it really began with Andrew
Jackson. If General Jackson hadn’t run the Creeks up the creek,
Simon Finch would never have paddled up the Alabama, and where would
we be if he hadn’t? We were far too old to settle an argument with
a fist-fight, so we consulted Atticus. Our father said we were both
right. Being Southerners, it was a source of shame to some members of
the family that we had no recorded ancestors on either side of the
Battle of Hastings. All we had was Simon Finch, a fur-trapping
apothecary from Cornwall whose piety was exceeded only by his
stinginess. In England, Simon was irritated by the persecution of
those who called themselves Methodists at the hands of their more
liberal brethren, and as Simon called himself a Methodist, he worked
his way across the Atlantic to Philadelphia, thence to Jamaica,
thence to Mobile, and up the Saint Stephens. Mindful of John Wesley’s
strictures on the use of many words in buying and selling, Simon made
a pile practicing medicine, but in this pursuit he was unhappy lest
he be tempted into doing what he knew was not for the glory of God,
as the putting on of gold and costly apparel. So Simon, having
forgotten his teacher’s dictum on the possession of human chattels,
bought three slaves and with their aid established a homestead on the
banks of the Alabama River some forty miles above Saint Stephens. He
returned to Saint Stephens only once, to find a wife, and with her
established a line that ran high to daughters. Simon lived to an
impressive age and died rich. It was customary for the men in the
family to remain on Simon’s homestead, Finch’s Landing, and make
their living from cotton. The place was self-sufficient: modest in
comparison with the empires around it, the Landing nevertheless
produced everything required to sustain life except ice, wheat flour,
and articles of clothing, supplied by river-boats from Mobile. Simon
would have regarded with impotent fury the disturbance between the
North and the South, as it left his descendants stripped of
everything but their land, yet the tradition of living on the land
remained unbroken until well into the twentieth century, when my
father, Atticus Finch, went to Montgomery to read law, and his
younger brother went to Boston to study medicine. Their sister
Alexandra was the Finch who remained at the Landing: she married a
taciturn man who spent most of his time lying in a hammock by the
river wondering if his trot-lines were full. When my father was
admitted to the bar, he returned to Maycomb and began his practice.
Maycomb, some twenty miles east of Finch’s Landing, was the county
seat of Maycomb County. Atticus’s office in the courthouse
contained little more than a hat rack, a spittoon, a checkerboard and
an unsullied Code of Alabama. His first two clients were the last two
persons hanged in the Maycomb County jail. Atticus had urged them to
accept the state’s generosity in allowing them to plead Guilty to
second-degree murder and escape with their lives, but they were
Haverfords, in Maycomb County a name synonymous with jackass. The
Haverfords had dispatched Maycomb’s leading blacksmith in a
misunderstanding arising from the alleged wrongful detention of a
mare, were imprudent enough to do it in the presence of three
witnesses, and insisted that the-son-of-a-bitch-had-it-coming-to-him
was a good enough defense for anybody. They persisted in pleading Not
Guilty to first-degree murder, so there was nothing much Atticus
could do for his clients except be present at their departure, an
occasion that was probably the beginning of my father’s profound
distaste for the practice of criminal law. During his first five
years in Maycomb, Atticus practiced economy more than anything; for
several years thereafter he invested his earnings in his brother’s
education. John Hale Finch was ten years younger than my father, and
chose to study medicine at a time when cotton was not worth growing;
but after getting Uncle Jack started, Atticus derived a reasonable
income from the law. He liked Maycomb, he was Maycomb County born and
bred; he knew his people, they knew him, and because of Simon Finch’s
industry, Atticus was related by blood or marriage to nearly every
family in the town. Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old
town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red
slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the
square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a
summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in
the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men’s stiff
collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon,
after their three-o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft
teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum. People moved
slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of
the stores around it, took their time about everything. A day was
twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for
there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with,
nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County. But it was a
time of vague optimism for some of the people: Maycomb County had
recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself. We
lived on the main residential street in town—Atticus, Jem and I,
plus Calpurnia our cook. Jem and I found our father satisfactory: he
played with us, read to us, and treated us with courteous detachment.
Calpurnia was something else again. She was all angles and bones; she
was nearsighted; she squinted; her hand was wide as a bed slat and
twice as hard. She was always ordering me out of the kitchen, asking
me why I couldn’t behave as well as Jem when she knew he was older,
and calling me home when I wasn’t ready to come. Our battles were
epic and one-sided. Calpurnia always won, mainly because Atticus
always took her side. She had been with us ever since Jem was born,
and I had felt her tyrannical presence as long as I could remember.
Our mother died when I was two, so I never felt her absence. She was
a Graham from Montgomery; Atticus met her when he was first elected
to the state legislature. He was middle-aged then, she was fifteen
years his junior. Jem was the product of their first year of
marriage; four years later I was born, and two years later our mother
died from a sudden heart attack. They said it ran in her family. I
did not miss her, but I think Jem did. He remembered her clearly, and
sometimes in the middle of a game he would sigh at length, then go
off and play by himself behind the car-house. When he was like that,
I knew better than to bother him. When I was almost six and Jem was
nearly ten, our summertime boundaries (within calling distance of
Calpurnia) were Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose’s house two doors to
the north of us, and the Radley Place three doors to the south. We
were never tempted to break them. The Radley Place was inhabited by
an unknown entity the mere description of whom was enough to make us
behave for days on end; Mrs. Dubose was plain hell. That was the
summer Dill came to us. Early one morning as we were beginning our
day’s play in the back yard, Jem and I heard something next door in
Miss Rachel Haverford’s collard patch. We went to the wire fence to
see if there was a puppy—Miss Rachel’s rat terrier was
expecting—instead we found someone sitting looking at us. Sitting
down, he wasn’t much higher than the collards. We stared at him
until he spoke: “Hey.” “Hey yourself,” said Jem pleasantly.
“I’m Charles Baker Harris,” he said. “I can read.” “So
what?” I said. “I just thought you’d like to know I can read.
You got anything needs readin‘ I can do it…” “How old are
you,” asked Jem, “four-and-a-half?” “Goin‘ on seven.”
“Shoot no wonder, then,” said Jem, jerking his thumb at me.
“Scout yonder’s been readin‘ ever since she was born, and she
ain’t even started to school yet. You look right puny for goin’
on seven.” “I’m little but I’m old,” he said. Jem brushed
his hair back to get a better look. “Why don’t you come over,
Charles Baker Harris?” he said. “Lord, what a name.” “‘s
not any funnier’n yours. Aunt Rachel says your name’s Jeremy
Atticus Finch.” Jem scowled. “I’m big enough to fit mine,” he
said. “Your name’s longer’n you are. Bet it’s a foot longer.”
“Folks call me Dill,” said Dill, struggling under the fence. “Do
better if you go over it instead of under it,” I said. “Where’d
you come from?” Dill was from Meridian, Mississippi, was spending
the summer with his aunt, Miss Rachel, and would be spending every
summer in Maycomb from now on. His family was from Maycomb County
originally, his mother worked for a photographer in Meridian, had
entered his picture in a Beautiful Child contest and won five
dollars. She gave the money to Dill, who went to the picture show
twenty times on it. “Don’t have any picture shows here, except
Jesus ones in the courthouse sometimes,” said Jem. “Ever see
anything good?” Dill had seen Dracula,
a revelation that moved Jem to eye him with the beginning of respect.
“Tell it to us,” he said. Dill was a curiosity. He wore blue
linen shorts that buttoned to his shirt, his hair was snow white and
stuck to his head like duckfluff; he was a year my senior but I
towered over him. As he told us the old tale his blue eyes would
lighten and darken; his laugh was sudden and happy; he habitually
pulled at a cowlick in the center of his forehead. When Dill reduced
Dracula to dust, and Jem said the show sounded better than the book,
I asked Dill where his father was: “You ain’t said anything about
him.” “I haven’t got one.” “Is he dead?” “No…”
“Then if he’s not dead you’ve got one, haven’t you?” Dill
blushed and Jem told me to hush, a sure sign that Dill had been
studied and found acceptable. Thereafter the summer passed in routine
contentment. Routine contentment was: improving our treehouse that
rested between giant twin chinaberry trees in the back yard, fussing,
running through our list of dramas based on the works of Oliver
Optic, Victor Appleton, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. In this matter we
were lucky to have Dill. He played the character parts formerly
thrust upon me—the ape in Tarzan,
Mr. Crabtree in The
Rover Boys,
Mr. Damon in Tom
Swift.
Thus we came to know Dill as a pocket Merlin, whose head teemed with
eccentric plans, strange longings, and quaint fancies. But by the end
of August our repertoire was vapid from countless reproductions, and
it was then that Dill gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out.
The Radley Place fascinated Dill. In spite of our warnings and
explanations it drew him as the moon draws water, but drew him no
nearer than the light-pole on the corner, a safe distance from the
Radley gate. There he would stand, his arm around the fat pole,
staring and wondering. The Radley Place jutted into a sharp curve
beyond our house. Walking south, one faced its porch; the sidewalk
turned and ran beside the lot. The house was low, was once white with
a deep front porch and green shutters, but had long ago darkened to
the color of the slate-gray yard around it. Rain-rotted shingles
drooped over the eaves of the veranda; oak trees kept the sun away.
The remains of a picket drunkenly guarded the front yard—a “swept”
yard that was never swept—where johnson grass and rabbit-tobacco
grew in abundance. Inside the house lived a malevolent phantom.
People said he existed, but Jem and I had never seen him. People said
he went out at night when the moon was down, and peeped in windows.
When people’s azaleas froze in a cold snap, it was because he had
breathed on them. Any stealthy small crimes committed in Maycomb were
his work. Once the town was terrorized by a series of morbid
nocturnal events: people’s chickens and household pets were found
mutilated; although the culprit was Crazy Addie, who eventually
drowned himself in Barker’s Eddy, people still looked at the Radley
Place, unwilling to discard their initial suspicions. A Negro would
not pass the Radley Place at night, he would cut across to the
sidewalk opposite and whistle as he walked. The Maycomb school
grounds adjoined the back of the Radley lot; from the Radley
chickenyard tall pecan trees shook their fruit into the schoolyard,
but the nuts lay untouched by the children: Radley pecans would kill
you. A baseball hit into the Radley yard was a lost ball and no
questions asked. The misery of that house began many years before Jem
and I were born. The Radleys, welcome anywhere in town, kept to
themselves, a predilection unforgivable in Maycomb. They did not go
to church, Maycomb’s principal recreation, but worshiped at home;
Mrs. Radley seldom if ever crossed the street for a mid-morning
coffee break with her neighbors, and certainly never joined a
missionary circle. Mr. Radley walked to town at eleven-thirty every
morning and came back promptly at twelve, sometimes carrying a brown
paper bag that the neighborhood assumed contained the family
groceries. I never knew how old Mr. Radley made his living—Jem said
he “bought cotton,” a polite term for doing nothing—but Mr.
Radley and his wife had lived there with their two sons as long as
anybody could remember. The shutters and doors of the Radley house
were closed on Sundays, another thing alien to Maycomb’s ways:
closed doors meant illness and cold weather only. Of all days Sunday
was the day for formal afternoon visiting: ladies wore corsets, men
wore coats, children wore shoes. But to climb the Radley front steps
and call, “He-y,” of a Sunday afternoon was something their
neighbors never did. The Radley house had no screen doors. I once
asked Atticus if it ever had any; Atticus said yes, but before I was
born. According to neighborhood legend, when the younger Radley boy
was in his teens he became acquainted with some of the Cunninghams
from Old Sarum, an enormous and confusing tribe domiciled in the
northern part of the county, and they formed the nearest thing to a
gang ever seen in Maycomb. They did little, but enough to be
discussed by the town and publicly warned from three pulpits: they
hung around the barbershop; they rode the bus to Abbottsville on
Sundays and went to the picture show; they attended dances at the
county’s riverside gambling hell, the Dew-Drop Inn & Fishing
Camp; they experimented with stumphole whiskey. Nobody in Maycomb had
nerve enough to tell Mr. Radley that his boy was in with the wrong
crowd. One night, in an excessive spurt of high spirits, the boys
backed around the square in a borrowed flivver, resisted arrest by
Maycomb’s ancient beadle, Mr. Conner, and locked him in the
courthouse outhouse. The town decided something had to be done; Mr.
Conner said he knew who each and every one of them was, and he was
bound and determined they wouldn’t get away with it, so the boys
came before the probate judge on charges of disorderly conduct,
disturbing the peace, assault and battery, and using abusive and
profane language in the presence and hearing of a female. The judge
asked Mr. Conner why he included the last charge; Mr. Conner said
they cussed so loud the state industrial school, where boys were
sometimes sent for no other reason than to provide them with food and
decent shelter: it was no prison and it was no disgrace. Mr. Radley
thought it was. If the judge released Arthur, Mr. Radley would see to
it that Arthur gave no further trouble. Knowing that Mr. Radley’s
word was his bond, the judge was glad to do so. The other boys
attended the industrial school and received the best secondary
education to be had in the state; one of them eventually worked his
way through engineering school at Auburn. The doors of the Radley
house were closed on weekdays as well as Sundays, and Mr. Radley’s
boy was not seen again for fifteen years. But there came a day,
barely within Jem’s memory, when Boo Radley was heard from and was
seen by several people, but not by Jem. He said Atticus never talked
much about the Radleys: when Jem would question him Atticus’s only
answer was for him to mind his own business and let the Radleys mind
theirs, they had a right to; but when it happened Jem said Atticus
shook his head and said, “Mm, mm, mm.” So Jem received most of
his information from Miss Stephanie Crawford, a neighborhood scold,
who said she knew the whole thing. According to Miss Stephanie, Boo
was sitting in the livingroom cutting some items from The
Maycomb Tribune to
paste in his scrapbook. His father entered the room. As Mr. Radley
passed by, Boo drove the scissors into his parent’s leg, pulled
them out, wiped them on his pants, and resumed his activities. Mrs.
Radley ran screaming into the street that Arthur was killing them
all, but when the sheriff arrived he found Boo still sitting in the
livingroom, cutting up the Tribune. He was thirty-three years old
then. Miss Stephanie said old Mr. Radley said no Radley was going to
any asylum, when it was suggested that a season in Tuscaloosa might
be helpful to Boo. Boo wasn’t crazy, he was high-strung at times.
It was all right to shut him up, Mr. Radley conceded, but insisted
that Boo not be charged with anything: he was not a criminal. The
sheriff hadn’t the heart to put him in jail alongside Negroes, so
Boo was locked in the courthouse basement. Boo’s transition from
the basement to back home was nebulous in Jem’s memory. Miss
Stephanie Crawford said some of the town council told Mr. Radley that
if he didn’t take Boo back, Boo would die of mold from the damp.
Besides, Boo could not live forever on the bounty of the county.
Nobody knew what form of intimidation Mr. Radley employed to keep Boo
out of sight, but Jem figured that Mr. Radley kept him chained to the
bed most of the time. Atticus said no, it wasn’t that sort of
thing, that there were other ways of making people into ghosts. My
memory came alive to see Mrs. Radley occasionally open the front
door, walk to the edge of the porch, and pour water on her cannas.
But every day Jem and I would see Mr. Radley walking to and from
town. He was a thin leathery man with colorless eyes, so colorless
they did not reflect light. His cheekbones were sharp and his mouth
was wide, with a thin upper lip and a full lower lip. Miss Stephanie
Crawford said he was so upright he took the word of God as his only
law, and we believed her, because Mr. Radley’s posture was ramrod
straight. He never spoke to us. When he passed we would look at the
ground and say, “Good morning, sir,” and he would cough in reply.
Mr. Radley’s elder son lived in Pensacola; he came home at
Christmas, and he was one of the few persons we ever saw enter or
leave the place. From the day Mr. Radley took Arthur home, people
said the house died. But there came a day when Atticus told us he’d
wear us out if we made any noise in the yard and commissioned
Calpurnia to serve in his absence if she heard a sound out of us. Mr.
Radley was dying. He took his time about it. Wooden sawhorses blocked
the road at each end of the Radley lot, straw was put down on the
sidewalk, traffic was diverted to the back street. Dr. Reynolds
parked his car in front of our house and walked to the Radley’s
every time he called. Jem and I crept around the yard for days. At
last the sawhorses were taken away, and we stood watching from the
front porch when Mr. Radley made his final journey past our house.
“There goes the meanest man ever God blew breath into,” murmured
Calpurnia, and she spat meditatively into the yard. We looked at her
in surprise, for Calpurnia rarely commented on the ways of white
people. The neighborhood thought when Mr. Radley went under Boo would
come out, but it had another think coming: Boo’s elder brother
returned from Pensacola and took Mr. Radley’s place. The only
difference between him and his father was their ages. Jem said Mr.
Nathan Radley “bought cotton,” too. Mr. Nathan would speak to us,
however, when we said good morning, and sometimes we saw him coming
from town with a magazine in his hand. The more we told Dill about
the Radleys, the more he wanted to know, the longer he would stand
hugging the light-pole on the corner, the more he would wonder.
“Wonder what he does in there,” he would murmur. “Looks like
he’d just stick his head out the door.” Jem said, “He goes out,
all right, when it’s pitch dark. Miss Stephanie Crawford said she
woke up in the middle of the night one time and saw him looking
straight through the window at her… said his head was like a skull
lookin‘ at her. Ain’t you ever waked up at night and heard him,
Dill? He walks like this-” Jem slid his feet through the gravel.
“Why do you think Miss Rachel locks up so tight at night? I’ve
seen his tracks in our back yard many a mornin’, and one night I
heard him scratching on the back screen, but he was gone time Atticus
got there.” “Wonder what he looks like?” said Dill. Jem gave a
reasonable description of Boo: Boo was about six-and-a-half feet
tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats
he could catch, that’s why his hands were bloodstained—if you ate
an animal raw, you could never wash the blood off. There was a long
jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow
and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled most of the time. “Let’s
try to make him come out,” said Dill. “I’d like to see what he
looks like.” Jem said if Dill wanted to get himself killed, all he
had to do was go up and knock on the front door. Our first raid came
to pass only because Dill bet Jem The
Gray Ghost against
two Tom Swifts that Jem wouldn’t get any farther than the Radley
gate. In all his life, Jem had never declined a dare. Jem thought
about it for three days. I suppose he loved honor more than his head,
for Dill wore him down easily: “You’re scared,” Dill said, the
first day. “Ain’t scared, just respectful,” Jem said. The next
day Dill said, “You’re too scared even to put your big toe in the
front yard.” Jem said he reckoned he wasn’t, he’d passed the
Radley Place every school day of his life. “Always runnin‘,” I
said. But Dill got him the third day, when he told Jem that folks in
Meridian certainly weren’t as afraid as the folks in Maycomb, that
he’d never seen such scary folks as the ones in Maycomb. This was
enough to make Jem march to the corner, where he stopped and leaned
against the light-pole, watching the gate hanging crazily on its
homemade hinge. “I hope you’ve got it through your head that
he’ll kill us each and every one, Dill Harris,” said Jem, when we
joined him. “Don’t blame me when he gouges your eyes out. You
started it, remember.” “You’re still scared,” murmured Dill
patiently. Jem wanted Dill to know once and for all that he wasn’t
scared of anything: “It’s just that I can’t think of a way to
make him come out without him gettin‘ us.” Besides, Jem had his
little sister to think of. When he said that, I knew he was afraid.
Jem had his little sister to think of the time I dared him to jump
off the top of the house: “If I got killed, what’d become of
you?” he confronted by the Radley Place. “You gonna run out on a
dare?” asked Dill. “If you are, then-” “Dill, you have to
think about these things,” Jem said. “Lemme think a minute…
it’s sort of like making a turtle come out…” “How’s that?”
asked Dill. “Strike a match under him.” I told Jem if he set fire
to the Radley house I was going to tell Atticus on him. Dill said
striking a match under a turtle was hateful. “Ain’t hateful, just
persuades him—‘s not like you’d chunk him in the fire,” Jem
growled. “How do you know a match don’t hurt him?” “Turtles
can’t feel, stupid,” said Jem. “Were you ever a turtle, huh?”
“My stars, Dill! Now lemme think… reckon we can rock him…”
Jem stood in thought so long that Dill made a mild concession: “I
won’t say you ran out on a dare an‘ I’ll swap you The
Gray Ghost if
you just go up and touch the house.” Jem brightened. “Touch the
house, that all?” Dill nodded. “Sure that’s all, now? I don’t
want you hollerin‘ something different the minute I get back.”
“Yeah, that’s all,” said Dill. “He’ll probably come out
after you when he sees you in the yard, then Scout’n‘ me’ll
jump on him and hold him down till we can tell him we ain’t gonna
hurt him.” We left the corner, crossed the side street that ran in
front of the Radley house, and stopped at the gate. “Well go on,”
said Dill, “Scout and me’s right behind you.” “I’m going,”
said Jem, “don’t hurry me.” He walked to the corner of the lot,
then back again, studying the simple terrain as if deciding how best
to effect an entry, frowning and scratching his head. Then I sneered
at him. Jem threw open the gate and sped to the side of the house,
slapped it with his palm and ran back past us, not waiting to see if
his foray was successful. Dill and I followed on his heels. Safely on
our porch, panting and out of breath, we looked back. The old house
was the same, droopy and sick, but as we stared down the street we
thought we saw an inside shutter move. Flick. A tiny, almost
invisible movement, and the house was still.

Chapter
2

Dill
left us early in September, to return to Meridian. We saw him off on
the five o’clock bus and I was miserable without him until it
occurred to me that I would be starting to school in a week. I never
looked forward more to anything in my life. Hours of wintertime had
found me in the treehouse, looking over at the schoolyard, spying on
multitudes of children through a two-power telescope Jem had given
me, learning their games, following Jem’s red jacket through
wriggling circles of blind man’s buff, secretly sharing their
misfortunes and minor victories. I longed to join them. Jem
condescended to take me to school the first day, a job usually done
by one’s parents, but Atticus had said Jem would be delighted to
show me where my room was. I think some money changed hands in this
transaction, for as we trotted around the corner past the Radley
Place I heard an unfamiliar jingle in Jem’s pockets. When we slowed
to a walk at the edge of the schoolyard, Jem was careful to explain
that during school hours I was not to bother him, I was not to
approach him with requests to enact a chapter of Tarzan and the Ant
Men, to embarrass him with references to his private life, or tag
along behind him at recess and noon. I was to stick with the first
grade and he would stick with the fifth. In short, I was to leave him
alone. “You mean we can’t play any more?” I asked. “We’ll
do like we always do at home,” he said, “but you’ll
see—school’s different.” It certainly was. Before the first
morning was over, Miss Caroline Fisher, our teacher, hauled me up to
the front of the room and patted the palm of my hand with a ruler,
then made me stand in the corner until noon. Miss Caroline was no
more than twenty-one. She had bright auburn hair, pink cheeks, and
wore crimson fingernail polish. She also wore high-heeled pumps and a
red-and-white-striped dress. She looked and smelled like a peppermint
drop. She boarded across the street one door down from us in Miss
Maudie Atkinson’s upstairs front room, and when Miss Maudie
introduced us to her, Jem was in a haze for days. Miss Caroline
printed her name on the blackboard and said, “This says I am Miss
Caroline Fisher. I am from North Alabama, from Winston County.” The
class murmured apprehensively, should she prove to harbor her share
of the peculiarities indigenous to that region. (When Alabama seceded
from the Union on January 11, 1861, Winston County seceded from
Alabama, and every child in Maycomb County knew it.) North Alabama
was full of Liquor Interests, Big Mules, steel companies,
Republicans, professors, and other persons of no background. Miss
Caroline began the day by reading us a story about cats. The cats had
long conversations with one another, they wore cunning little clothes
and lived in a warm house beneath a kitchen stove. By the time Mrs.
Cat called the drugstore for an order of chocolate malted mice the
class was wriggling like a bucketful of catawba worms. Miss Caroline
seemed unaware that the ragged, denim-shirted and floursack-skirted
first grade, most of whom had chopped cotton and fed hogs from the
time they were able to walk, were immune to imaginative literature.
Miss Caroline came to the end of the story and said, “Oh,
my, wasn’t that nice?” Then she went to the blackboard and
printed the alphabet in enormous square capitals, turned to the class
and asked, “Does anybody know what these are?” Everybody did;
most of the first grade had failed it last year. I suppose she chose
me because she knew my name; as I read the alphabet a faint line
appeared between her eyebrows, and after making me read most of My
First Reader and
the stock-market quotations from The
Mobile Register aloud,
she discovered that I was literate and looked at me with more than
faint distaste. Miss Caroline told me to tell my father not to teach
me any more, it would interfere with my reading. “Teach me?” I
said in surprise. “He hasn’t taught me anything, Miss Caroline.
Atticus ain’t got time to teach me anything,” I added, when Miss
Caroline smiled and shook her head. “Why, he’s so tired at night
he just sits in the livingroom and reads.” “If he didn’t teach
you, who did?” Miss Caroline asked good-naturedly. “Somebody did.
You weren’t born reading The
Mobile Register.”
“Jem says I was. He read in a book where I was a Bullfinch instead
of a Finch. Jem says my name’s really Jean Louise Bullfinch, that I
got swapped when I was born and I’m really a-” Miss Caroline
apparently thought I was lying. “Let’s not let our imaginations
run away with us, dear,” she said. “Now you tell your father not
to teach you any more. It’s best to begin reading with a fresh
mind. You tell him I’ll take over from here and try to undo the
damage-” “Ma’am?” “Your father does not know how to teach.
You can have a seat now.” I mumbled that I was sorry and retired
meditating upon my crime. I never deliberately learned to read, but
somehow I had been wallowing illicitly in the daily papers. In the
long hours of church—was it then I learned? I could not remember
not being able to read hymns. Now that I was compelled to think about
it, reading was something that just came to me, as learning to fasten
the seat of my union suit without looking around, or achieving two
bows from a snarl of shoelaces. I could not remember when the lines
above Atticus’s moving finger separated into words, but I had
stared at them all the evenings in my memory, listening to the news
of the day, Bills to Be Enacted into Laws, the diaries of Lorenzo
Dow—anything Atticus happened to be reading when I crawled into his
lap every night. Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to
read. One does not love breathing. I knew I had annoyed Miss
Caroline, so I let well enough alone and stared out the window until
recess when Jem cut me from the covey of first-graders in the
schoolyard. He asked how I was getting along. I told him. “If I
didn’t have to stay I’d leave. Jem, that damn lady says Atticus’s
been teaching me to read and for him to stop it-” “Don’t worry,
Scout,” Jem comforted me. “Our teacher says Miss Caroline’s
introducing a new way of teaching. She learned about it in college.
It’ll be in all the grades soon. You don’t have to learn much out
of books that way—it’s like if you wanta learn about cows, you go
milk one, see?” “Yeah Jem, but I don’t wanta study cows, I-”
“Sure you do. You hafta know about cows, they’re a big part of
life in Maycomb County.” I contented myself with asking Jem if he’d
lost his mind. “I’m just trying to tell you the new way they’re
teachin‘ the first grade, stubborn. It’s the Dewey Decimal
System.” Having never questioned Jem’s pronouncements, I saw no
reason to begin now. The Dewey Decimal System consisted, in part, of
Miss Caroline waving cards at us on which were printed “the,”
“cat,” “rat,” “man,” and “you.” No comment seemed to
be expected of us, and the class received these impressionistic
revelations in silence. I was bored, so I began a letter to Dill.
Miss Caroline caught me writing and told me to tell my father to stop
teaching me. “Besides,” she said. “We don’t write in the
first grade, we print. You won’t learn to write until you’re in
the third grade.” Calpurnia was to blame for this. It kept me from
driving her crazy on rainy days, I guess. She would set me a writing
task by scrawling the alphabet firmly across the top of a tablet,
then copying out a chapter of the Bible beneath. If I reproduced her
penmanship satisfactorily, she rewarded me with an open-faced
sandwich of bread and butter and sugar. In Calpurnia’s teaching,
there was no sentimentality: I seldom pleased her and she seldom
rewarded me. “Everybody who goes home to lunch hold up your hands,”
said Miss Caroline, breaking into my new grudge against Calpurnia.
The town children did so, and she looked us over. “Everybody who
brings his lunch put it on top of his desk.” Molasses buckets
appeared from nowhere, and the ceiling danced with metallic light.
Miss Caroline walked up and down the rows peering and poking into
lunch containers, nodding if the contents pleased her, frowning a
little at others. She stopped at Walter Cunningham’s desk. “Where’s
yours?” she asked. Walter Cunningham’s face told everybody in the
first grade he had hookworms. His absence of shoes told us how he got
them. People caught hookworms going barefooted in barnyards and hog
wallows. If Walter had owned any shoes he would have worn them the
first day of school and then discarded them until mid-winter. He did
have on a clean shirt and neatly mended overalls. “Did you forget
your lunch this morning?” asked Miss Caroline. Walter looked
straight ahead. I saw a muscle jump in his skinny jaw. “Did you
forget it this morning?” asked Miss Caroline. Walter’s jaw
twitched again. “Yeb’m,” he finally mumbled. Miss Caroline went
to her desk and opened her purse. “Here’s a quarter,” she said
to Walter. “Go and eat downtown today. You can pay me back
tomorrow.” Walter shook his head. “Nome thank you ma’am,” he
drawled softly. Impatience crept into Miss Caroline’s voice: “Here
Walter, come get it.” Walter shook his head again. When Walter
shook his head a third time someone whispered, “Go on and tell her,
Scout.” I turned around and saw most of the town people and the
entire bus delegation looking at me. Miss Caroline and I had
conferred twice already, and they were looking at me in the innocent
assurance that familiarity breeds understanding. I rose graciously on
Walter’s behalf: “Ah—Miss Caroline?” “What is it, Jean
Louise?” “Miss Caroline, he’s a Cunningham.” I sat back down.
“What, Jean Louise?” I thought I had made things sufficiently
clear. It was clear enough to the rest of us: Walter Cunningham was
sitting there lying his head off. He didn’t forget his lunch, he
didn’t have any. He had none today nor would he have any tomorrow
or the next day. He had probably never seen three quarters together
at the same time in his life. I tried again: “Walter’s one of the
Cunninghams, Miss Caroline.” “I beg your pardon, Jean Louise?”
“That’s okay, ma’am, you’ll get to know all the county folks
after a while. The Cunninghams never took anything they can’t pay
back—no church baskets and no scrip stamps. They never took
anything off of anybody, they get along on what they have. They don’t
have much, but they get along on it.” My special knowledge of the
Cunningham tribe—one branch, that is—was gained from events of
last winter. Walter’s father was one of Atticus’s clients. After
a dreary conversation in our livingroom one night about his
entailment, before Mr. Cunningham left he said, “Mr. Finch, I don’t
know when I’ll ever be able to pay you.” “Let that be the least
of your worries, Walter,” Atticus said. When I asked Jem what
entailment was, and Jem described it as a condition of having your
tail in a crack, I asked Atticus if Mr. Cunningham would ever pay us.
“Not in money,” Atticus said, “but before the year’s out I’ll
have been paid. You watch.” We watched. One morning Jem and I found
a load of stovewood in the back yard. Later, a sack of hickory nuts
appeared on the back steps. With Christmas came a crate of smilax and
holly. That spring when we found a crokersack full of turnip greens,
Atticus said Mr. Cunningham had more than paid him. “Why does he
pay you like that?” I asked. “Because that’s the only way he
can pay me. He has no money.” “Are we poor, Atticus?” Atticus
nodded. “We are indeed.” Jem’s nose wrinkled. “Are we as poor
as the Cunninghams?” “Not exactly. The Cunninghams are country
folks, farmers, and the crash hit them hardest.” Atticus said
professional people were poor because the farmers were poor. As
Maycomb County was farm country, nickels and dimes were hard to come
by for doctors and dentists and lawyers. Entailment was only a part
of Mr. Cunningham’s vexations. The acres not entailed were
mortgaged to the hilt, and the little cash he made went to interest.
If he held his mouth right, Mr. Cunningham could get a WPA job, but
his land would go to ruin if he left it, and he was willing to go
hungry to keep his land and vote as he pleased. Mr. Cunningham, said
Atticus, came from a set breed of men. As the Cunninghams had no
money to pay a lawyer, they simply paid us with what they had. “Did
you know,” said Atticus, “that Dr. Reynolds works the same way?
He charges some folks a bushel of potatoes for delivery of a baby.
Miss Scout, if you give me your attention I’ll tell you what
entailment is. Jem’s definitions are very nearly accurate
sometimes.” If I could have explained these things to Miss
Caroline, I would have saved myself some inconvenience and Miss
Caroline subsequent mortification, but it was beyond my ability to
explain things as well as Atticus, so I said, “You’re shamin‘
him, Miss Caroline. Walter hasn’t got a quarter at home to bring
you, and you can’t use any stovewood. her desk. “Jean Louise,
I’ve had about enough of you this morning,” she said. “You’re
starting off on the wrong foot in every way, my dear. Hold out your
hand.” I thought she was going to spit in it, which was the only
reason anybody in Maycomb held out his hand: it was a time-honored
method of sealing oral contracts. Wondering what bargain we had made,
I turned to the class for an answer, but the class looked back at me
in puzzlement. Miss Caroline picked up her ruler, gave me half a
dozen quick little pats, then told me to stand in the corner. A storm
of laughter broke loose when it finally occurred to the class that
Miss Caroline had whipped me. When Miss Caroline threatened it with a
similar fate the first grade exploded again, becoming cold sober only
when the shadow of Miss Blount fell over them. Miss Blount, a native
Maycombian as yet uninitiated in the mysteries of the Decimal System,
appeared at the door hands on hips and announced: “If I hear
another sound from this room I’ll burn up everybody in it. Miss
Caroline, the sixth grade cannot concentrate on the pyramids for all
this racket!” My sojourn in the corner was a short one. Saved by
the bell, Miss Caroline watched the class file out for lunch. As I
was the last to leave, I saw her sink down into her chair and bury
her head in her arms. Had her conduct been more friendly toward me, I
would have felt sorry for her. She was a pretty little thing.

Chapter
3

Catching
Walter Cunningham in the schoolyard gave me some pleasure, but when I
was rubbing his nose in the dirt Jem came by and told me to stop.
“You’re bigger’n he is,” he said. “He’s as old as you,
nearly,” I said. “He made me start off on the wrong foot.” “Let
him go, Scout. Why?” “He didn’t have any lunch,” I said, and
explained my involvement in Walter’s dietary affairs. Walter had
picked himself up and was standing quietly listening to Jem and me.
His fists were half cocked, as if expecting an onslaught from both of
us. I stomped at him to chase him away, but Jem put out his hand and
stopped me. He examined Walter with an air of speculation. “Your
daddy Mr. Walter Cunningham from Old Sarum?” he asked, and Walter
nodded. Walter looked as if he had been raised on fish food: his
eyes, as blue as Dill Harris’s, were red-rimmed and watery. There
was no color in his face except at the tip of his nose, which was
moistly pink. He fingered the straps of his overalls, nervously
picking at the metal hooks. Jem suddenly grinned at him. “Come on
home to dinner with us, Walter,” he said. “We’d be glad to have
you.” Walter’s face brightened, then darkened. Jem said, “Our
daddy’s a friend of your daddy’s. Scout here, she’s crazy—she
won’t fight you any more.” “I wouldn’t be too certain of
that,” I said. Jem’s free dispensation of my pledge irked me, but
precious noontime minutes were ticking away. “Yeah Walter, I won’t
jump on you again. Don’t you like butterbeans? Our Cal’s a real
good cook.” Walter stood where he was, biting his lip. Jem and I
gave up, and we were nearly to the Radley Place when Walter called,
“Hey, I’m comin‘!” When Walter caught up with us, Jem made
pleasant conversation with him. “A hain’t lives there,” he said
cordially, pointing to the Radley house. “Ever hear about him,
Walter?” “Reckon I have,” said Walter. “Almost died first
year I come to school and et them pecans—folks say he pizened ‘em
and put ’em over on the school side of the fence.” Jem seemed to
have little fear of Boo Radley now that Walter and I walked beside
him. Indeed, Jem grew boastful: “I went all the way up to the house
once,” he said to Walter.
“Anybody who went up to the house once oughta not to still run
every time he passes it,” I said to the clouds above. “And who’s
runnin‘, Miss Priss?” “You are, when ain’t anybody with you.”
By the time we reached our front steps Walter had forgotten he was a
Cunningham. Jem ran to the kitchen and asked Calpurnia to set an
extra plate, we had company. Atticus greeted Walter and began a
discussion about crops neither Jem nor I could follow. “Reason I
can’t pass the first grade, Mr. Finch, is I’ve had to stay out
ever‘ spring an’ help Papa with the choppin‘, but there’s
another’n at the house now that’s field size.” “Did you pay a
bushel of potatoes for him?” I asked, but Atticus shook his head at
me. While Walter piled food on his plate, he and Atticus talked
together like two men, to the wonderment of Jem and me. Atticus was
expounding upon farm problems when Walter interrupted to ask if there
was any molasses in the house. Atticus summoned Calpurnia, who
returned bearing the syrup pitcher. She stood waiting for Walter to
help himself. Walter poured syrup on his vegetables and meat with a
generous hand. He would probably have poured it into his milk glass
had I not asked what the sam hill he was doing. The silver saucer
clattered when he replaced the pitcher, and he quickly put his hands
in his lap. Then he ducked his head. Atticus shook his head at me
again. “But he’s gone and drowned his dinner in syrup,” I
protested. “He’s poured it all over-” It was then that
Calpurnia requested my presence in the kitchen. She was furious, and
when she was furious Calpurnia’s grammar became erratic. When in
tranquility, her grammar was as good as anybody’s in Maycomb.
Atticus said Calpurnia had more education than most colored folks.
When she squinted down at me the tiny lines around her eyes deepened.
“There’s some folks who don’t eat like us,” she whispered
fiercely, “but you ain’t called on to contradict ‘em at the
table when they don’t. That boy’s yo’ comp’ny and if he wants
to eat up the table cloth you let him, you hear?” “He ain’t
company, Cal, he’s just a Cunningham-” “Hush your mouth! Don’t
matter who they are, anybody sets foot in this house’s yo‘
comp’ny, and don’t you let me catch you remarkin’ on their ways
like you was so high and mighty! Yo‘ folks might be better’n the
Cunninghams but it don’t count for nothin’ the way you’re
disgracin‘ ’em—if you can’t act fit to eat at the table you
can just set here and eat in the kitchen!” Calpurnia sent me
through the swinging door to the diningroom with a stinging smack. I
retrieved my plate and finished dinner in the kitchen, thankful,
though, that I was spared the humiliation of facing them again. I
told Calpurnia to just wait, I’d fix her: one of these days when
she wasn’t looking I’d go off and drown myself in Barker’s Eddy
and then she’d be sorry. Besides, I added, she’d already gotten
me in trouble once today: she had taught me to write and it was all
her fault. “Hush your fussin‘,” she said. Jem and Walter
returned to school ahead of me: staying behind to advise Atticus of
Calpurnia’s iniquities was worth a solitary sprint past the Radley
Place. “She likes Jem better’n she likes me, anyway,” I
concluded, and suggested that Atticus lose no time in packing her
off. “Have you ever considered that Jem doesn’t worry her half as
much?” Atticus’s voice was flinty. “I’ve no intention of
getting rid of her, now or ever. We couldn’t operate a single day
without Cal, have you ever thought of that? You think about how much
Cal does for you, and you mind her, you hear?” I returned to school
and hated Calpurnia steadily until a sudden shriek shattered my
resentments. I looked up to see Miss Caroline standing in the middle
of the room, sheer horror flooding her face. Apparently she had
revived enough to persevere in her profession. “It’s alive!”
she screamed. The male population of the class rushed as one to her
assistance. Lord, I thought, she’s scared of a mouse. Little Chuck
Little, whose patience with all living things was phenomenal, said,
“Which way did he go, Miss Caroline? Tell us where he went, quick!
D.C.-” he turned to a boy behind him—“D.C., shut the door and
we’ll catch him. Quick, ma’am, where’d he go?” Miss Caroline
pointed a shaking finger not at the floor nor at a desk, but to a
hulking individual unknown to me. Little Chuck’s face contracted
and he said gently, “You mean him, ma’am? Yessum, he’s alive.
Did he scare you some way?” Miss Caroline said desperately, “I
was just walking by when it crawled out of his hair… just crawled
out of his hair-” Little Chuck grinned broadly. “There ain’t no
need to fear a cootie, ma’am. Ain’t you ever seen one? Now don’t
you be afraid, you just go back to your desk and teach us some more.”
Little Chuck Little was another member of the population who didn’t
know where his next meal was coming from, but he was a born
gentleman. He put his hand under her elbow and led Miss Caroline to
the front of the room. “Now don’t you fret, ma’am,” he said.
“There ain’t no need to fear a cootie. I’ll just fetch you some
cool water.” The cootie’s host showed not the faintest interest
in the furor he had wrought. He searched the scalp above his
forehead, located his guest and pinched it between his thumb and
forefinger. Miss Caroline watched the process in horrid fascination.
Little Chuck brought water in a paper cup, and she drank it
gratefully. Finally she found her voice. “What is your name, son?”
she asked softly. The boy blinked. “Who, me?” Miss Caroline
nodded. “Burris Ewell.” Miss Caroline inspected her roll-book. “I
have a Ewell here, but I don’t have a first name… would you spell
your first name for me?” “Don’t know how. They call me Burris’t
home.” “Well, Burris,” said Miss Caroline, “I think we’d
better excuse you for the rest of the afternoon. I want you to go
home and wash your hair.” From her desk she produced a thick
volume, leafed through its pages and read for a moment. “A good
home remedy for—Burris, I want you to go home and wash your hair
with lye soap. When you’ve done that, treat your scalp with
kerosene.” “What fer, missus?” “To get rid of the—er,
cooties. You see, Burris, the other children might catch them, and
you wouldn’t want that, would you?” The boy stood up. He was the
filthiest human I had ever seen. His neck was dark gray, the backs of
his hands were rusty, and his fingernails were black deep into the
quick. He peered at Miss Caroline from a fist-sized clean space on
his face. No one had noticed him, probably, because Miss Caroline and
I had entertained the class most of the morning. “And Burris,”
said Miss Caroline, “please bathe yourself before you come back
tomorrow.” The boy laughed rudely. “You ain’t sendin‘ me
home, missus. I was on the verge of leavin’—I done done my time
for this year.” Miss Caroline looked puzzled. “What do you mean
by that?” The boy did not answer. He gave a short contemptuous
snort. One of the elderly members of the class answered her: “He’s
one of the Ewells, ma’am,” and I wondered if this explanation
would be as unsuccessful as my attempt. But Miss Caroline seemed
willing to listen. “Whole school’s full of ‘em. They come first
day every year and then leave. The truant lady gets ’em here ‘cause
she threatens ’em with the sheriff, but she’s give up tryin‘ to
hold ’em. She reckons she’s carried out the law just gettin‘
their names on the roll and runnin’ ‘em here the first day.
You’re supposed to mark ’em absent the rest of the year… “But
what about their parents?” asked Miss Caroline, in genuine concern.
“Ain’t got no mother,” was the answer, “and their paw’s
right contentious.” Burris Ewell was flattered by the recital.
“Been comin‘ to the first day o’ the first grade fer three year
now,” he said expansively. “Reckon if I’m smart this year
they’ll promote me to the second…” Miss Caroline said, “Sit
back down, please, Burris,” and the moment she said it I knew she
had made a serious mistake. The boy’s condescension flashed to
anger. “You try and make me, missus.” Little Chuck Little got to
his feet. “Let him go, ma’am,” he said. “He’s a mean one, a
hard-down mean one. He’s liable to start somethin‘, and there’s
some little folks here.” He was among the most diminutive of men,
but when Burris Ewell turned toward him, Little Chuck’s right hand
went to his pocket. “Watch your step, Burris,” he said. “I’d
soon’s kill you as look at you. Now go home.” Burris seemed to be
afraid of a child half his height, and Miss Caroline took advantage
of his indecision: “Burris, go home. If you don’t I’ll call the
principal,” she said. “I’ll have to report this, anyway.” The
boy snorted and slouched leisurely to the door. Safely out of range,
he turned and shouted: “Report and be damned to ye! Ain’t no
snot-nosed slut of a schoolteacher ever born c’n make me do
nothin‘! You ain’t makin’ me go nowhere, missus. You just
remember that, you ain’t makin‘ me go nowhere!” He waited until
he was sure she was crying, then he shuffled out of the building.
Soon we were clustered around her desk, trying in our various ways to
comfort her. He was a real mean one… below the belt… you ain’t
called on to teach folks like that… them ain’t Maycomb’s ways,
Miss Caroline, not really… now don’t you fret, ma’am. Miss
Caroline, why don’t you read us a story? That cat thing was real
fine this mornin‘… Miss Caroline smiled, blew her nose, said,
“Thank you, darlings,” dispersed us, opened a book and mystified
the first grade with a long narrative about a toadfrog that lived in
a hall. When I passed the Radley Place for the fourth time that
day—twice at a full gallop—my gloom had deepened to match the
house. If the remainder of the school year were as fraught with drama
as the first day, perhaps it would be mildly entertaining, but the
prospect of spending nine months refraining from reading and writing
made me think of running away. By late afternoon most of my traveling
plans were complete; when Jem and I raced each other up the sidewalk
to meet Atticus coming home from work, I didn’t give him much of a
race. It was our habit to run meet Atticus the moment we saw him
round the post office corner in the distance. Atticus seemed to have
forgotten my noontime fall from grace; he was full of questions about
school. My replies were monosyllabic and he did not press me. Perhaps
Calpurnia sensed that my day had been a grim one: she let me watch
her fix supper. “Shut your eyes and open your mouth and I’ll give
you a surprise,” she said. It was not often that she made crackling
bread, she said she never had time, but with both of us at school
today had been an easy one for her. She knew I loved crackling bread.
“I missed you today,” she said. “The house got so lonesome
‘long about two o’clock I had to turn on the radio.” “Why?
Jem’n me ain’t ever in the house unless it’s rainin‘.” “I
know,” she said, “But one of you’s always in callin‘
distance. I wonder how much of the day I spend just callin’ after
you. Well,” she said, getting up from the kitchen chair, “it’s
enough time to make a pan of cracklin‘ bread, I reckon. You run
along now and let me get supper on the table.” Calpurnia bent down
and kissed me. I ran along, wondering what had come over her. She had
wanted to make up with me, that was it. She had always been too hard
on me, she had at last seen the error of her fractious ways, she was
sorry and too stubborn to say so. I was weary from the day’s
crimes. After supper, Atticus sat down with the paper and called,
“Scout, ready to read?” The Lord sent me more than I could bear,
and I went to the front porch. Atticus followed me. “Something
wrong, Scout?” I told Atticus I didn’t feel very well and didn’t
think I’d go to school any more if it was all right with him.
Atticus sat down in the swing and crossed his legs. His fingers
wandered to his watchpocket; he said that was the only way he could
think. He waited in amiable silence, and I sought to reinforce my
position: “You never went to school and you do all right, so I’ll
just stay home too. You can teach me like Granddaddy taught you ‘n’
Uncle Jack.” “No I can’t,” said Atticus. “I have to make a
living. Besides, they’d put me in jail if I kept you at home—dose
of magnesia for you tonight and school tomorrow.” “I’m feeling
all right, really.” “Thought so. Now what’s the matter?” Bit
by bit, I told him the day’s misfortunes. “-and she said you
taught me all wrong, so we can’t ever read any more, ever. Please
don’t send me back, please sir.” Atticus stood up and walked to
the end of the porch. When he completed his examination of the
wisteria vine he strolled back to me. “First of all,” he said,
“if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot
better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person
until you consider things from his point of view-” “Sir?”
“-until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” Atticus
said I had learned many things today, and Miss Caroline had learned
several things herself. She had learned not to hand something to a
Cunningham, for one thing, but if Walter and I had put ourselves in
her shoes we’d have seen it was an honest mistake on her part. We
could not expect her to learn all Maycomb’s ways in one day, and we
could not hold her responsible when she knew no better. “I’ll be
dogged,” I said. “I didn’t know no better than not to read to
her, and she held me responsible—listen Atticus, I don’t have to
go to school!” I was bursting with a sudden thought. “Burris
Ewell, remember? He just goes to school the first day. The truant
lady reckons she’s carried out the law when she gets his name on
the roll-” “You can’t do that, Scout,” Atticus said.
“Sometimes it’s better to bend the law a little in special cases.
In your case, the law remains rigid. So to school you must go.” “I
don’t see why I have to when he doesn’t.” “Then listen.”
Atticus said the Ewells had been the disgrace of Maycomb for three
generations. None of them had done an honest day’s work in his
recollection. He said that some Christmas, when he was getting rid of
the tree, he would take me with him and show me where and how they
lived. They were people, but they lived like animals. “They can go
to school any time they want to, when they show the faintest symptom
of wanting an education,” said Atticus. “There are ways of
keeping them in school by force, but it’s silly to force people
like the Ewells into a new environment-” “If I didn’t go to
school tomorrow, you’d force me to.” “Let us leave it at this,”
said Atticus dryly. “You, Miss Scout Finch, are of the common folk.
You must obey the law.” He said that the Ewells were members of an
exclusive society made up of Ewells. In certain circumstances the
common folk judiciously allowed them certain privileges by the simple
method of becoming blind to some of the Ewells’ activities. They
didn’t have to go to school, for one thing. Another thing, Mr. Bob
Ewell, Burris’s father, was permitted to hunt and trap out of
season. “Atticus, that’s bad,” I said. In Maycomb County,
hunting out of season was a misdemeanor at law, a capital felony in
the eyes of the populace. “It’s against the law, all right,”
said my father, “and it’s certainly bad, but when a man spends
his relief checks on green whiskey his children have a way of crying
from hunger pains. I don’t know of any landowner around here who
begrudges those children any 17

game
their father can hit.” “Mr. Ewell shouldn’t do that-” “Of
course he shouldn’t, but he’ll never change his ways. Are you
going to take out your disapproval on his children?” “No sir,”
I murmured, and made a final stand: “But if I keep on goin‘ to
school, we can’t ever read any more…” “That’s really
bothering you, isn’t it?” “Yes sir.” When Atticus looked down
at me I saw the expression on his face that always made me expect
something. “Do you know what a compromise is?” he asked. “Bending
the law?” “No, an agreement reached by mutual concessions. It
works this way,” he said. “If you’ll concede the necessity of
going to school, we’ll go on reading every night just as we always
have. Is it a bargain?” “Yes sir!” “We’ll consider it
sealed without the usual formality,” Atticus said, when he saw me
preparing to spit. As I opened the front screen door Atticus said,
“By the way, Scout, you’d better not say anything at school about
our agreement.” “Why not?” “I’m afraid our activities would
be received with considerable disapprobation by the more learned
authorities.” Jem and I were accustomed to our father’s
last-will-and-testament diction, and we were at all times free to
interrupt Atticus for a translation when it was beyond our
understanding. “Huh, sir?” “I never went to school,” he said,
“but I have a feeling that if you tell Miss Caroline we read every
night she’ll get after me, and I wouldn’t want her after me.”
Atticus kept us in fits that evening, gravely reading columns of
print about a man who sat on a flagpole for no discernible reason,
which was reason enough for Jem to spend the following Saturday aloft
in the treehouse. Jem sat from after breakfast until sunset and would
have remained overnight had not Atticus severed his supply lines. I
had spent most of the day climbing up and down, running errands for
him, providing him with literature, nourishment and water, and was
carrying him blankets for the night when Atticus said if I paid no
attention to him, Jem would come down. Atticus was right.

Chapter
4

The
remainder of my schooldays were no more auspicious than the first.
Indeed, they were an endless Project that slowly evolved into a Unit,
in which miles of construction paper and wax crayon were expended by
the State of Alabama in its well-meaning but fruitless efforts to
teach me Group Dynamics. What Jem called the Dewey Decimal System was
school-wide by the end of my first year, so I had no chance to
compare it with other teaching techniques. I could only look around
me: Atticus and my uncle, who went to school at home, knew
everything—at least, what one didn’t know the other did.
Furthermore, I couldn’t help noticing that my father had served for
years in the state legislature, elected each time without opposition,
innocent of the adjustments my teachers thought essential to the
development of Good Citizenship. Jem, educated on a half-Decimal
half-Duncecap basis, seemed to function effectively alone or in a
group, but Jem was a poor example: no tutorial system devised by man
could have stopped him from getting at books. As for me, I knew
nothing except what I gathered from Time
magazine and
reading everything I could lay hands on at home, but as I inched
sluggishly along the treadmill of the Maycomb County school system, I
could not help receiving the impression that I was being cheated out
of something. Out of what I knew not, yet I did not believe that
twelve years of unrelieved boredom was exactly what the 18

state
had in mind for me. As the year passed, released from school thirty
minutes before Jem, who had to stay until three o’clock, I ran by
the Radley Place as fast as I could, not stopping until I reached the
safety of our front porch. One afternoon as I raced by, something
caught my eye and caught it in such a way that I took a deep breath,
a long look around, and went back. Two live oaks stood at the edge of
the Radley lot; their roots reached out into the side-road and made
it bumpy. Something about one of the trees attracted my attention.
Some tinfoil was sticking in a knot-hole just above my eye level,
winking at me in the afternoon sun. I stood on tiptoe, hastily looked
around once more, reached into the hole, and withdrew two pieces of
chewing gum minus their outer wrappers. My first impulse was to get
it into my mouth as quickly as possible, but I remembered where I
was. I ran home, and on our front porch I examined my loot. The gum
looked fresh. I sniffed it and it smelled all right. I licked it and
waited for a while. When I did not die I crammed it into my mouth:
Wrigley’s Double-Mint. When Jem came home he asked me where I got
such a wad. I told him I found it. “Don’t eat things you find,
Scout.” “This wasn’t on the ground, it was in a tree.” Jem
growled. “Well it was,” I said. “It was sticking in that tree
yonder, the one comin‘ from school.” “Spit it out right now!”
I spat it out. The tang was fading, anyway. “I’ve been chewin‘
it all afternoon and I ain’t dead yet, not even sick.” Jem
stamped his foot. “Don’t you know you’re not supposed to even
touch the trees over there? You’ll get killed if you do!” “You
touched the house once!” “That was different! You go gargle—right
now, you hear me?” “Ain’t neither, it’ll take the taste outa
my mouth.” “You don’t ‘n’ I’ll tell Calpurnia on you!”
Rather than risk a tangle with Calpurnia, I did as Jem told me. For
some reason, my first year of school had wrought a great change in
our relationship: Calpurnia’s tyranny, unfairness, and meddling in
my business had faded to gentle grumblings of general disapproval. On
my part, I went to much trouble, sometimes, not to provoke her.
Summer was on the way; Jem and I awaited it with impatience. Summer
was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in
cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good
to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape; but most of
all, summer was Dill. The authorities released us early the last day
of school, and Jem and I walked home together. “Reckon old Dill’ll
be coming home tomorrow,” I said. “Probably day after,” said
Jem. “Mis’sippi turns ‘em loose a day later.” As we came to
the live oaks at the Radley Place I raised my finger to point for the
hundredth time to the knot-hole where I had found the chewing gum,
trying to make Jem believe I had found it there, and found myself
pointing at another piece of tinfoil. “I see it, Scout! I see it-”
Jem looked around, reached up, and gingerly pocketed a tiny shiny
package. We ran home, and on the front porch we looked at a small box
patchworked with bits of tinfoil collected from chewing-gum wrappers.
It was the kind of box wedding rings came in, purple velvet with a
minute catch. Jem flicked open the tiny catch. Inside were two
scrubbed and polished pennies, one on top of the other. Jem examined
them. “Indian-heads,” he said. “Nineteen-six and Scout, one of
em’s nineteen-hundred. These are real old.” “Nineteen-hundred,”
I echoed. “Say-” “Hush a minute, I’m thinkin‘.” “Jem,
you reckon that’s somebody’s hidin‘ place?” “Naw, don’t
anybody much but us pass by there, unless it’s some grown
person’s-” 19

“Grown
folks don’t have hidin‘ places. You reckon we ought to keep ’em,
Jem?” “I don’t know what we could do, Scout. Who’d we give
‘em back to? I know for a fact don’t anybody go by there—Cecil
goes by the back street an’ all the way around by town to get
home.” Cecil Jacobs, who lived at the far end of our street next
door to the post office, walked a total of one mile per school day to
avoid the Radley Place and old Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose. Mrs.
Dubose lived two doors up the street from us; neighborhood opinion
was unanimous that Mrs. Dubose was the meanest old woman who ever
lived. Jem wouldn’t go by her place without Atticus beside him.
“What you reckon we oughta do, Jem?” Finders were keepers unless
title was proven. Plucking an occasional camellia, getting a squirt
of hot milk from Miss Maudie Atkinson’s cow on a summer day,
helping ourselves to someone’s scuppernongs was part of our ethical
culture, but money was different. “Tell you what,” said Jem.
“We’ll keep ‘em till school starts, then go around and ask
everybody if they’re theirs. They’re some bus child’s, maybe—he
was too taken up with gettin’ outa school today an‘ forgot ’em.
These are somebody’s, I know that. See how they’ve been slicked
up? They’ve been saved.” “Yeah, but why should somebody wanta
put away chewing gum like that? You know it doesn’t last.” “I
don’t know, Scout. But these are important to somebody…” “How’s
that, Jem…?” “Well, Indian-heads—well, they come from the
Indians. They’re real strong magic, they make you have good luck.
Not like fried chicken when you’re not lookin‘ for it, but things
like long life ’n‘ good health, ’n‘ passin’ six-weeks
tests… these are real valuable to somebody. I’m gonna put em in
my trunk.” Before Jem went to his room, he looked for a long time
at the Radley Place. He seemed to be thinking again. Two days later
Dill arrived in a blaze of glory: he had ridden the train by himself
from Meridian to Maycomb Junction (a courtesy title—Maycomb
Junction was in Abbott County) where he had been met by Miss Rachel
in Maycomb’s one taxi; he had eaten dinner in the diner, he had
seen two twins hitched together get off the train in Bay St. Louis
and stuck to his story regardless of threats. He had discarded the
abominable blue shorts that were buttoned to his shirts and wore real
short pants with a belt; he was somewhat heavier, no taller, and said
he had seen his father. Dill’s father was taller than ours, he had
a black beard (pointed), and was president of the L & N Railroad.
“I helped the engineer for a while,” said Dill, yawning. “In a
pig’s ear you did, Dill. Hush,” said Jem. “What’ll we play
today?” “Tom and Sam and Dick,” said Dill. “Let’s go in the
front yard.” Dill wanted the Rover Boys because there were three
respectable parts. He was clearly tired of being our character man.
“I’m tired of those,” I said. I was tired of playing Tom Rover,
who suddenly lost his memory in the middle of a picture show and was
out of the script until the end, when he was found in Alaska. “Make
us up one, Jem,” I said. “I’m tired of makin‘ ’em up.”
Our first days of freedom, and we were tired. I wondered what the
summer would bring. We had strolled to the front yard, where Dill
stood looking down the street at the dreary face of the Radley Place.
“I—smell—death,” he said. “I do, I mean it,” he said,
when I told him to shut up. “You mean when somebody’s dyin‘ you
can smell it?” “No, I mean I can smell somebody an‘ tell if
they’re gonna die. An old lady taught me how.” Dill leaned over
and sniffed me. “Jean—Louise—Finch, you are going to die in
three days.” 20

“Dill
if you don’t hush I’ll knock you bowlegged. I mean it, now-”
“Yawl hush,” growled Jem, “you act like you believe in Hot
Steams.” “You act like you don’t,” I said. “What’s a Hot
Steam?” asked Dill. “Haven’t you ever walked along a lonesome
road at night and passed by a hot place?” Jem asked Dill. “A Hot
Steam’s somebody who can’t get to heaven, just wallows around on
lonesome roads an‘ if you walk through him, when you die you’ll
be one too, an’ you’ll go around at night suckin‘ people’s
breath-” “How can you keep from passing through one?” “You
can’t,” said Jem. “Sometimes they stretch all the way across
the road, but if you hafta go through one you say, ‘Angel-bright,
life-in-death; get off the road, don’t suck my breath.’ That
keeps ‘em from wrapping around you-” “Don’t you believe a
word he says, Dill,” I said. “Calpurnia says that’s
nigger-talk.” Jem scowled darkly at me, but said, “Well, are we
gonna play anything or not?” “Let’s roll in the tire,” I
suggested. Jem sighed. “You know I’m too big.” “You c’n
push.” I ran to the back yard and pulled an old car tire from under
the house. I slapped it up to the front yard. “I’m first,” I
said. Dill said he ought to be first, he just got here. Jem
arbitrated, awarded me first push with an extra time for Dill, and I
folded myself inside the tire. Until it happened I did not realize
that Jem was offended by my contradicting him on Hot Steams, and that
he was patiently awaiting an opportunity to reward me. He did, by
pushing the tire down the sidewalk with all the force in his body.
Ground, sky and houses melted into a mad palette, my ears throbbed, I
was suffocating. I could not put out my hands to stop, they were
wedged between my chest and knees. I could only hope that Jem would
outrun the tire and me, or that I would be stopped by a bump in the
sidewalk. I heard him behind me, chasing and shouting. The tire
bumped on gravel, skeetered across the road, crashed into a barrier
and popped me like a cork onto pavement. Dizzy and nauseated, I lay
on the cement and shook my head still, pounded my ears to silence,
and heard Jem’s voice: “Scout, get away from there, come on!” I
raised my head and stared at the Radley Place steps in front of me. I
froze. “Come on, Scout, don’t just lie there!” Jem was
screaming. “Get up, can’tcha?” I got to my feet, trembling as I
thawed. “Get the tire!” Jem hollered. “Bring it with you! Ain’t
you got any sense at all?” When I was able to navigate, I ran back
to them as fast as my shaking knees would carry me. “Why didn’t
you bring it?” Jem yelled. “Why don’t you
get
it?” I screamed. Jem was silent. “Go on, it ain’t far inside
the gate. Why, you even touched the house once, remember?” Jem
looked at me furiously, could not decline, ran down the sidewalk,
treaded water at the gate, then dashed in and retrieved the tire.
“See there?” Jem was scowling triumphantly. “Nothin‘ to it. I
swear, Scout, sometimes you act so much like a girl it’s
mortifyin’.” There was more to it than he knew, but I decided not
to tell him. Calpurnia appeared in the front door and yelled,
“Lemonade time! You all get in outa that hot sun ‘fore you fry
alive!” Lemonade in the middle of the morning was a summertime
ritual. Calpurnia set a pitcher and three glasses on the porch, then
went about her business. Being out of Jem’s good graces did not
worry me especially. Lemonade would restore his good humor. Jem
gulped down his second glassful and slapped his chest. “I know what
we are 21

going
to play,” he announced. “Something new, something different.”
“What?” asked Dill. “Boo Radley.” Jem’s head at times was
transparent: he had thought that up to make me understand he wasn’t
afraid of Radleys in any shape or form, to contrast his own fearless
heroism with my cowardice. “Boo Radley? How?” asked Dill. Jem
said, “Scout, you can be Mrs. Radley-” “I declare if I will. I
don’t think-” “‘Smatter?” said Dill. “Still scared?”
“He can get out at night when we’re all asleep…” I said. Jem
hissed. “Scout, how’s he gonna know what we’re doin‘?
Besides, I don’t think he’s still there. He died years ago and
they stuffed him up the chimney.” Dill said, “Jem, you and me can
play and Scout can watch if she’s scared.” I was fairly sure Boo
Radley was inside that house, but I couldn’t prove it, and felt it
best to keep my mouth shut or I would be accused of believing in Hot
Steams, phenomena I was immune to in the daytime. Jem parceled out
our roles: I was Mrs. Radley, and all I had to do was come out and
sweep the porch. Dill was old Mr. Radley: he walked up and down the
sidewalk and coughed when Jem spoke to him. Jem, naturally, was Boo:
he went under the front steps and shrieked and howled from time to
time. As the summer progressed, so did our game. We polished and
perfected it, added dialogue and plot until we had manufactured a
small play upon which we rang changes every day. Dill was a villain’s
villain: he could get into any character part assigned him, and
appear tall if height was part of the devilry required. He was as
good as his worst performance; his worst performance was Gothic. I
reluctantly played assorted ladies who entered the script. I never
thought it as much fun as Tarzan, and I played that summer with more
than vague anxiety despite Jem’s assurances that Boo Radley was
dead and nothing would get me, with him and Calpurnia there in the
daytime and Atticus home at night. Jem was a born hero. It was a
melancholy little drama, woven from bits and scraps of gossip and
neighborhood legend: Mrs. Radley had been beautiful until she married
Mr. Radley and lost all her money. She also lost most of her teeth,
her hair, and her right forefinger (Dill’s contribution. Boo bit it
off one night when he couldn’t find any cats and squirrels to
eat.); she sat in the livingroom and cried most of the time, while
Boo slowly whittled away all the furniture in the house. The three of
us were the boys who got into trouble; I was the probate judge, for a
change; Dill led Jem away and crammed him beneath the steps, poking
him with the brushbroom. Jem would reappear as needed in the shapes
of the sheriff, assorted townsfolk, and Miss Stephanie Crawford, who
had more to say about the Radleys than anybody in Maycomb. When it
was time to play Boo’s big scene, Jem would sneak into the house,
steal the scissors from the sewing-machine drawer when Calpurnia’s
back was turned, then sit in the swing and cut up newspapers. Dill
would walk by, cough at Jem, and Jem would fake a plunge into Dill’s
thigh. From where I stood it looked real. When Mr. Nathan Radley
passed us on his daily trip to town, we would stand still and silent
until he was out of sight, then wonder what he would do to us if he
suspected. Our activities halted when any of the neighbors appeared,
and once I saw Miss Maudie Atkinson staring across the street at us,
her hedge clippers poised in midair. One day we were so busily
playing Chapter XXV, Book II of One Man’s Family, we did not see
Atticus standing on the sidewalk looking at us, slapping a rolled
magazine against his knee. The sun said twelve noon. “What are you
all playing?” he asked. 22

“Nothing,”
said Jem. Jem’s evasion told me our game was a secret, so I kept
quiet. “What are you doing with those scissors, then? Why are you
tearing up that newspaper? If it’s today’s I’ll tan you.”
“Nothing.” “Nothing what?” said Atticus. “Nothing, sir.”
“Give me those scissors,” Atticus said. “They’re no things to
play with. Does this by any chance have anything to do with the
Radleys?” “No sir,” said Jem, reddening. “I hope it doesn’t,”
he said shortly, and went inside the house. “Je-m…” “Shut up!
He’s gone in the livingroom, he can hear us in there.” Safely in
the yard, Dill asked Jem if we could play any more. “I don’t
know. Atticus didn’t say we couldn’t-” “Jem,” I said, “I
think Atticus knows it anyway.” “No he don’t. If he did he’d
say he did.” I was not so sure, but Jem told me I was being a girl,
that girls always imagined things, that’s why other people hated
them so, and if I started behaving like one I could just go off and
find some to play with. “All right, you just keep it up then,” I
said. “You’ll find out.” Atticus’s arrival was the second
reason I wanted to quit the game. The first reason happened the day I
rolled into the Radley front yard. Through all the head-shaking,
quelling of nausea and Jem-yelling, I had heard another sound, so low
I could not have heard it from the sidewalk. Someone inside the house
was laughing.

Chapter
5

My
nagging got the better of Jem eventually, as I knew it would, and to
my relief we slowed down the game for a while. He still maintained,
however, that Atticus hadn’t said we couldn’t, therefore we
could; and if Atticus ever said we couldn’t, Jem had thought of a
way around it: he would simply change the names of the characters and
then we couldn’t be accused of playing anything. Dill was in hearty
agreement with this plan of action. Dill was becoming something of a
trial anyway, following Jem about. He had asked me earlier in the
summer to marry him, then he promptly forgot about it. He staked me
out, marked as his property, said I was the only girl he would ever
love, then he neglected me. I beat him up twice but it did no good,
he only grew closer to Jem. They spent days together in the treehouse
plotting and planning, calling me only when they needed a third
party. But I kept aloof from their more foolhardy schemes for a
while, and on pain of being called a girl, I spent most of the
remaining twilights that summer sitting with Miss Maudie Atkinson on
her front porch. Jem and I had always enjoyed the free run of Miss
Maudie’s yard if we kept out of her azaleas, but our contact with
her was not clearly defined. Until Jem and Dill excluded me from
their plans, she was only another lady in the neighborhood, but a
relatively benign presence. Our tacit treaty with Miss Maudie was
that we could play on her lawn, eat her scuppernongs if we didn’t
jump on the arbor, and explore her vast back lot, terms so generous
we seldom spoke to her, so careful were we to preserve the delicate
balance of our relationship, but Jem and Dill drove me closer to her
with their behavior. Miss Maudie hated her house: time spent indoors
was time wasted. She was a widow, a chameleon lady who worked in her
flower beds in an old straw hat and men’s coveralls, but after her
five o’clock bath she would appear on the porch and reign over the
street in magisterial beauty. She loved everything that grew in God’s
earth, even the weeds. With one exception. If 23

she
found a blade of nut grass in her yard it was like the Second Battle
of the Marne: she swooped down upon it with a tin tub and subjected
it to blasts from beneath with a poisonous substance she said was so
powerful it’d kill us all if we didn’t stand out of the way. “Why
can’t you just pull it up?” I asked, after witnessing a prolonged
campaign against a blade not three inches high. “Pull it up, child,
pull it up?” She picked up the limp sprout and squeezed her thumb
up its tiny stalk. Microscopic grains oozed out. “Why, one sprig of
nut grass can ruin a whole yard. Look here. When it comes fall this
dries up and the wind blows it all over Maycomb County!” Miss
Maudie’s face likened such an occurrence unto an Old Testament
pestilence. Her speech was crisp for a Maycomb County inhabitant. She
called us by all our names, and when she grinned she revealed two
minute gold prongs clipped to her eyeteeth. When I admired them and
hoped I would have some eventually, she said, “Look here.” With a
click of her tongue she thrust out her bridgework, a gesture of
cordiality that cemented our friendship. Miss Maudie’s benevolence
extended to Jem and Dill, whenever they paused in their pursuits: we
reaped the benefits of a talent Miss Maudie had hitherto kept hidden
from us. She made the best cakes in the neighborhood. When she was
admitted into our confidence, every time she baked she made a big
cake and three little ones, and she would call across the street:
“Jem Finch, Scout Finch, Charles Baker Harris, come here!” Our
promptness was always rewarded. In summertime, twilights are long and
peaceful. Often as not, Miss Maudie and I would sit silently on her
porch, watching the sky go from yellow to pink as the sun went down,
watching flights of martins sweep low over the neighborhood and
disappear behind the schoolhouse rooftops. “Miss Maudie,” I said
one evening, “do you think Boo Radley’s still alive?” “His
name’s Arthur and he’s alive,” she said. She was rocking slowly
in her big oak chair. “Do you smell my mimosa? It’s like angels’
breath this evening.” “Yessum. How do you know?” “Know what,
child?” “That B—Mr. Arthur’s still alive?” “What a morbid
question. But I suppose it’s a morbid subject. I know he’s alive,
Jean Louise, because I haven’t seen him carried out yet.” “Maybe
he died and they stuffed him up the chimney.” “Where did you get
such a notion?” “That’s what Jem said he thought they did.”
“S-ss-ss. He gets more like Jack Finch every day.” Miss Maudie
had known Uncle Jack Finch, Atticus’s brother, since they were
children. Nearly the same age, they had grown up together at Finch’s
Landing. Miss Maudie was the daughter of a neighboring landowner, Dr.
Frank Buford. Dr. Buford’s profession was medicine and his
obsession was anything that grew in the ground, so he stayed poor.
Uncle Jack Finch confined his passion for digging to his window boxes
in Nashville and stayed rich. We saw Uncle Jack every Christmas, and
every Christmas he yelled across the street for Miss Maudie to come
marry him. Miss Maudie would yell back, “Call a little louder, Jack
Finch, and they’ll hear you at the post office, I haven’t heard
you yet!” Jem and I thought this a strange way to ask for a lady’s
hand in marriage, but then Uncle Jack was rather strange. He said he
was trying to get Miss Maudie’s goat, that he had been trying
unsuccessfully for forty years, that he was the last person in the
world Miss Maudie would think about marrying but the first person she
thought about teasing, and the best defense to her was spirited
offense, all of which we understood clearly. “Arthur Radley just
stays in the house, that’s all,” said Miss Maudie. “Wouldn’t
you stay in the house if you didn’t want to come out?” “Yessum,
but I’d wanta come out. Why doesn’t he?” Miss Maudie’s eyes
narrowed. “You know that story as well as I do.” 24

“I
never heard why, though. Nobody ever told me why.” Miss Maudie
settled her bridgework. “You know old Mr. Radley was a foot-washing
Baptist-” “That’s what you are, ain’t it?” “My shell’s
not that hard, child. I’m just a Baptist.” “Don’t you all
believe in foot-washing?” “We do. At home in the bathtub.” “But
we can’t have communion with you all-” Apparently deciding that
it was easier to define primitive baptistry than closed communion,
Miss Maudie said: “Foot-washers believe anything that’s pleasure
is a sin. Did you know some of ‘em came out of the woods one
Saturday and passed by this place and told me me and my flowers were
going to hell?” “Your flowers, too?” “Yes ma’am. They’d
burn right with me. They thought I spent too much time in God’s
outdoors and not enough time inside the house reading the Bible.”
My confidence in pulpit Gospel lessened at the vision of Miss Maudie
stewing forever in various Protestant hells. True enough, she had an
acid tongue in her head, and she did not go about the neighborhood
doing good, as did Miss Stephanie Crawford. But while no one with a
grain of sense trusted Miss Stephanie, Jem and I had considerable
faith in Miss Maudie. She had never told on us, had never played
cat-and-mouse with us, she was not at all interested in our private
lives. She was our friend. How so reasonable a creature could live in
peril of everlasting torment was incomprehensible. “That ain’t
right, Miss Maudie. You’re the best lady I know.” Miss Maudie
grinned. “Thank you ma’am. Thing is, foot-washers think women are
a sin by definition. They take the Bible literally, you know.” “Is
that why Mr. Arthur stays in the house, to keep away from women?”
“I’ve no idea.” “It doesn’t make sense to me. Looks like if
Mr. Arthur was hankerin‘ after heaven he’d come out on the porch
at least. Atticus says God’s loving folks like you love yourself-”
Miss Maudie stopped rocking, and her voice hardened. “You are too
young to understand it,” she said, “but sometimes the Bible in
the hand of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hand of—oh,
of your father.” I was shocked. “Atticus doesn’t drink
whiskey,” I said. “He never drunk a drop in his life—nome, yes
he did. He said he drank some one time and didn’t like it.” Miss
Maudie laughed. “Wasn’t talking about your father,” she said.
“What I meant was, if Atticus Finch drank until he was drunk he
wouldn’t be as hard as some men are at their best. There are just
some kind of men who—who’re so busy worrying about the next world
they’ve never learned to live in this one, and you can look down
the street and see the results.” “Do you think they’re true,
all those things they say about B—Mr. Arthur?” “What things?”
I told her. “That is three-fourths colored folks and one-fourth
Stephanie Crawford,” said Miss Maudie grimly. “Stephanie Crawford
even told me once she woke up in the middle of the night and found
him looking in the window at her. I said what did you do, Stephanie,
move over in the bed and make room for him? That shut her up a
while.” I was sure it did. Miss Maudie’s voice was enough to shut
anybody up. “No, child,” she said, “that is a sad house. I
remember Arthur Radley when he was a boy. He always spoke nicely to
me, no matter what folks said he did. Spoke as nicely as he knew
how.” “You reckon he’s crazy?” Miss Maudie shook her head.
“If he’s not he should be by now. The things that happen to
people we never really know. What happens in houses behind closed
doors, what secrets-” “Atticus don’t ever do anything to Jem
and me in the house that he don’t do in the 25

yard,”
I said, feeling it my duty to defend my parent. “Gracious child, I
was raveling a thread, wasn’t even thinking about your father, but
now that I am I’ll say this: Atticus Finch is the same in his house
as he is on the public streets. How’d you like some fresh poundcake
to take home?” I liked it very much. Next morning when I awakened I
found Jem and Dill in the back yard deep in conversation. When I
joined them, as usual they said go away. “Will not. This yard’s
as much mine as it is yours, Jem Finch. I got just as much right to
play in it as you have.” Dill and Jem emerged from a brief huddle:
“If you stay you’ve got to do what we tell you,” Dill warned.
“We-ll,” I said, “who’s so high and mighty all of a sudden?”
“If you don’t say you’ll do what we tell you, we ain’t gonna
tell you anything,” Dill continued. “You act like you grew ten
inches in the night! All right, what is it?” Jem said placidly, “We
are going to give a note to Boo Radley.” “Just how?” I was
trying to fight down the automatic terror rising in me. It was all
right for Miss Maudie to talk—she was old and snug on her porch. It
was different for us. Jem was merely going to put the note on the end
of a fishing pole and stick it through the shutters. If anyone came
along, Dill would ring the bell. Dill raised his right hand. In it
was my mother’s silver dinner-bell. “I’m goin‘ around to the
side of the house,” said Jem. “We looked yesterday from across
the street, and there’s a shutter loose. Think maybe I can make it
stick on the window sill, at least.” “Jem-” “Now you’re in
it and you can’t get out of it, you’ll just stay in it, Miss
Priss!” “Okay, okay, but I don’t wanta watch. Jem, somebody
was-” “Yes you will, you’ll watch the back end of the lot and
Dill’s gonna watch the front of the house an‘ up the street, an’
if anybody comes he’ll ring the bell. That clear?” “All right
then. What’d you write him?” Dill said, “We’re askin‘ him
real politely to come out sometimes, and tell us what he does in
there—we said we wouldn’t hurt him and we’d buy him an ice
cream.” “You all’ve gone crazy, he’ll kill us!” Dill said,
“It’s my idea. I figure if he’d come out and sit a spell with
us he might feel better.” “How do you know he don’t feel good?”
“Well how’d you feel if you’d been shut up for a hundred years
with nothin‘ but cats to eat? I bet he’s got a beard down to
here-” “Like your daddy’s?” “He ain’t got a beard, he-”
Dill stopped, as if trying to remember. “Uh huh, caughtcha,” I
said. “You said ‘fore you were off the train good your daddy had
a black beard-” “If it’s all the same to you he shaved it off
last summer! Yeah, an‘ I’ve got the letter to prove it—he sent
me two dollars, too!” “Keep on—I reckon he even sent you a
mounted police uniform! That’n never showed up, did it? You just
keep on tellin‘ ’em, son-” Dill Harris could tell the biggest
ones I ever heard. Among other things, he had been up in a mail plane
seventeen times, he had been to Nova Scotia, he had seen an elephant,
and his granddaddy was Brigadier General Joe Wheeler and left him his
sword. “You all hush,” said Jem. He scuttled beneath the house
and came out with a yellow bamboo pole. “Reckon this is long enough
to reach from the sidewalk?” “Anybody who’s brave enough to go
up and touch the house hadn’t oughta use a fishin‘ pole,” I
said. “Why don’t you just knock the front door down?”
“This—is—different,” said Jem, “how many times do I have to
tell you that?” 26

Dill
took a piece of paper from his pocket and gave it to Jem. The three
of us walked cautiously toward the old house. Dill remained at the
light-pole on the front corner of the lot, and Jem and I edged down
the sidewalk parallel to the side of the house. I walked beyond Jem
and stood where I could see around the curve. “All clear,” I
said. “Not a soul in sight.” Jem looked up the sidewalk to Dill,
who nodded. Jem attached the note to the end of the fishing pole, let
the pole out across the yard and pushed it toward the window he had
selected. The pole lacked several inches of being long enough, and
Jem leaned over as far as he could. I watched him making jabbing
motions for so long, I abandoned my post and went to him. “Can’t
get it off the pole,” he muttered, “or if I got it off I can’t
make it stay. G’on back down the street, Scout.” I returned and
gazed around the curve at the empty road. Occasionally I looked back
at Jem, who was patiently trying to place the note on the window
sill. It would flutter to the ground and Jem would jab it up, until I
thought if Boo Radley ever received it he wouldn’t be able to read
it. I was looking down the street when the dinner-bell rang. Shoulder
up, I reeled around to face Boo Radley and his bloody fangs; instead,
I saw Dill ringing the bell with all his might in Atticus’s face.
Jem looked so awful I didn’t have the heart to tell him I told him
so. He trudged along, dragging the pole behind him on the sidewalk.
Atticus said, “Stop ringing that bell.” Dill grabbed the clapper;
in the silence that followed, I wished he’d start ringing it again.
Atticus pushed his hat to the back of his head and put his hands on
his hips. “Jem,” he said, “what were you doing?” “Nothin‘,
sir.” “I don’t want any of that. Tell me.” “I was—we were
just tryin‘ to give somethin’ to Mr. Radley.” “What were you
trying to give him?” “Just a letter.” “Let me see it.” Jem
held out a filthy piece of paper. Atticus took it and tried to read
it. “Why do you want Mr. Radley to come out?” Dill said, “We
thought he might enjoy us…” and dried up when Atticus looked at
him. “Son,” he said to Jem, “I’m going to tell you something
and tell you one time: stop tormenting that man. That goes for the
other two of you.” What Mr. Radley did was his own business. If he
wanted to come out, he would. If he wanted to stay inside his own
house he had the right to stay inside free from the attentions of
inquisitive children, which was a mild term for the likes of us. How
would we like it if Atticus barged in on us without knocking, when we
were in our rooms at night? We were, in effect, doing the same thing
to Mr. Radley. What Mr. Radley did might seem peculiar to us, but it
did not seem peculiar to him. Furthermore, had it never occurred to
us that the civil way to communicate with another being was by the
front door instead of a side window? Lastly, we were to stay away
from that house until we were invited there, we were not to play an
asinine game he had seen us playing or make fun of anybody on this
street or in this town- “We weren’t makin‘ fun of him, we
weren’t laughin’ at him,” said Jem, “we were just-” “So
that was what you were doing, wasn’t it?” “Makin‘ fun of
him?” “No,” said Atticus, “putting his life’s history on
display for the edification of the neighborhood.” Jem seemed to
swell a little. “I didn’t say we were doin‘ that, I didn’t
say it!” Atticus grinned dryly. “You just told me,” he said.
“You stop this nonsense right now, every one of you.” Jem gaped
at him. “You want to be a lawyer, don’t you?” Our father’s
mouth was suspiciously firm, as if 27

he
were trying to hold it in line. Jem decided there was no point in
quibbling, and was silent. When Atticus went inside the house to
retrieve a file he had forgotten to take to work that morning, Jem
finally realized that he had been done in by the oldest lawyer’s
trick on record. He waited a respectful distance from the front
steps, watched Atticus leave the house and walk toward town. When
Atticus was out of earshot Jem yelled after him: “I thought I
wanted to be a lawyer but I ain’t so sure now!”

Chapter
6

“Yes,”
said our father, when Jem asked him if we could go over and sit by
Miss Rachel’s fishpool with Dill, as this was his last night in
Maycomb. “Tell him so long for me, and we’ll see him next
summer.” We leaped over the low wall that separated Miss Rachel’s
yard from our driveway. Jem whistled bob-white and Dill answered in
the darkness. “Not a breath blowing,” said Jem. “Looka yonder.”
He pointed to the east. A gigantic moon was rising behind Miss
Maudie’s pecan trees. “That makes it seem hotter,” he said.
“Cross in it tonight?” asked Dill, not looking up. He was
constructing a cigarette from newspaper and string. “No, just the
lady. Don’t light that thing, Dill, you’ll stink up this whole
end of town.” There was a lady in the moon in Maycomb. She sat at a
dresser combing her hair. “We’re gonna miss you, boy,” I said.
“Reckon we better watch for Mr. Avery?” Mr. Avery boarded across
the street from Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose’s house. Besides making
change in the collection plate every Sunday, Mr. Avery sat on the
porch every night until nine o’clock and sneezed. One evening we
were privileged to witness a performance by him which seemed to have
been his positively last, for he never did it again so long as we
watched. Jem and I were leaving Miss Rachel’s front steps one night
when Dill stopped us: “Golly, looka yonder.” He pointed across
the street. At first we saw nothing but a kudzu-covered front porch,
but a closer inspection revealed an arc of water descending from the
leaves and splashing in the yellow circle of the street light, some
ten feet from source to earth, it seemed to us. Jem said Mr. Avery
misfigured, Dill said he must drink a gallon a day, and the ensuing
contest to determine relative distances and respective prowess only
made me feel left out again, as I was untalented in this area. Dill
stretched, yawned, and said altogether too casually. “I know what,
let’s go for a walk.” He sounded fishy to me. Nobody in Maycomb
just went for a walk. “Where to, Dill?” Dill jerked his head in a
southerly direction. Jem said, “Okay.” When I protested, he said
sweetly, “You don’t have to come along, Angel May.” “You
don’t have to go. Remember-” Jem was not one to dwell on past
defeats: it seemed the only message he got from Atticus was insight
into the art of cross examination. “Scout, we ain’t gonna do
anything, we’re just goin‘ to the street light and back.” We
strolled silently down the sidewalk, listening to porch swings
creaking with the weight of the neighborhood, listening to the soft
night-murmurs of the grown people on our street. Occasionally we
heard Miss Stephanie Crawford laugh. “Well?” said Dill. “Okay,”
said Jem. “Why don’t you go on home, Scout?” “What are you
gonna do?” Dill and Jem were simply going to peep in the window
with the loose shutter to see if they could get a look at Boo Radley,
and if I didn’t want to go with them I could go straight home and
keep my fat flopping mouth shut, that was all. “But what in the sam
holy hill did you wait till tonight?” 28

Because
nobody could see them at night, because Atticus would be so deep in a
book he wouldn’t hear the Kingdom coming, because if Boo Radley
killed them they’d miss school instead of vacation, and because it
was easier to see inside a dark house in the dark than in the
daytime, did I understand? “Jem, please–”
“Scout, I’m tellin‘ you for the last time, shut your trap or go
home—I declare to the Lord you’re gettin’ more like a girl
every day!” With that, I had no option but to join them. We thought
it was better to go under the high wire fence at the rear of the
Radley lot, we stood less chance of being seen. The fence enclosed a
large garden and a narrow wooden outhouse. Jem held up the bottom
wire and motioned Dill under it. I followed, and held up the wire for
Jem. It was a tight squeeze for him. “Don’t make a sound,” he
whispered. “Don’t get in a row of collards whatever you do,
they’ll wake the dead.” With this thought in mind, I made perhaps
one step per minute. I moved faster when I saw Jem far ahead
beckoning in the moonlight. We came to the gate that divided the
garden from the back yard. Jem touched it. The gate squeaked. “Spit
on it,” whispered Dill. “You’ve got us in a box, Jem,” I
muttered. “We can’t get out of here so easy.” “Sh-h. Spit on
it, Scout.” We spat ourselves dry, and Jem opened the gate slowly,
lifting it aside and resting it on the fence. We were in the back
yard. The back of the Radley house was less inviting than the front:
a ramshackle porch ran the width of the house; there were two doors
and two dark windows between the doors. Instead of a column, a rough
two-by-four supported one end of the roof. An old Franklin stove sat
in a corner of the porch; above it a hat-rack mirror caught the moon
and shone eerily. “Ar-r,” said Jem softly, lifting his foot.
“‘Smatter?” “Chickens,” he breathed. That we would be
obliged to dodge the unseen from all directions was confirmed when
Dill ahead of us spelled G-o-d in a whisper. We crept to the side of
the house, around to the window with the hanging shutter. The sill
was several inches taller than Jem. “Give you a hand up,” he
muttered to Dill. “Wait, though.” Jem grabbed his left wrist and
my right wrist, I grabbed my left wrist and Jem’s right wrist, we
crouched, and Dill sat on our saddle. We raised him and he caught the
window sill. “Hurry,” Jem whispered, “we can’t last much
longer.” Dill punched my shoulder, and we lowered him to the
ground. “What’d you see?” “Nothing. Curtains. There’s a
little teeny light way off somewhere, though.” “Let’s get away
from here,” breathed Jem. “Let’s go ‘round in back again.
Sh-h,” he warned me, as I was about to protest. “Let’s try the
back window.” “Dill, no,”
I said. Dill stopped and let Jem go ahead. When Jem put his foot on
the bottom step, the step squeaked. He stood still, then tried his
weight by degrees. The step was silent. Jem skipped two steps, put
his foot on the porch, heaved himself to it, and teetered a long
moment. He regained his balance and dropped to his knees. He crawled
to the window, raised his head and looked in. Then I saw the shadow.
It was the shadow of a man with a hat on. At first I thought it was a
tree, but there was no wind blowing, and tree-trunks never walked.
The back porch was bathed in moonlight, and the shadow, crisp as
toast, moved across the porch toward Jem. Dill saw it next. He put
his hands to his face. When it crossed Jem, Jem saw it. He put his
arms over his head and went rigid. The shadow stopped about a foot
beyond Jem. Its arm came out from its side, 29

dropped,
and was still. Then it turned and moved back across Jem, walked along
the porch and off the side of the house, returning as it had come.
Jem leaped off the porch and galloped toward us. He flung open the
gate, danced Dill and me through, and shooed us between two rows of
swishing collards. Halfway through the collards I tripped; as I
tripped the roar of a shotgun shattered the neighborhood. Dill and
Jem dived beside me. Jem’s breath came in sobs: “Fence by the
schoolyard!—hurry, Scout!” Jem held the bottom wire; Dill and I
rolled through and were halfway to the shelter of the schoolyard’s
solitary oak when we sensed that Jem was not with us. We ran back and
found him struggling in the fence, kicking his pants off to get
loose. He ran to the oak tree in his shorts. Safely behind it, we
gave way to numbness, but Jem’s mind was racing: “We gotta get
home, they’ll miss us.” We ran across the schoolyard, crawled
under the fence to Deer’s Pasture behind our house, climbed our
back fence and were at the back steps before Jem would let us pause
to rest. Respiration normal, the three of us strolled as casually as
we could to the front yard. We looked down the street and saw a
circle of neighbors at the Radley front gate. “We better go down
there,” said Jem. “They’ll think it’s funny if we don’t
show up.” Mr. Nathan Radley was standing inside his gate, a shotgun
broken across his arm. Atticus was standing beside Miss Maudie and
Miss Stephanie Crawford. Miss Rachel and Mr. Avery were near by. None
of them saw us come up. We eased in beside Miss Maudie, who looked
around. “Where were you all, didn’t you hear the commotion?”
“What happened?” asked Jem. “Mr. Radley shot at a Negro in his
collard patch.” “Oh. Did he hit him?” “No,” said Miss
Stephanie. “Shot in the air. Scared him pale, though. Says if
anybody sees a white nigger around, that’s the one. Says he’s got
the other barrel waitin‘ for the next sound he hears in that patch,
an’ next time he won’t aim high, be it dog, nigger, or—Jem
Finch!”
“Ma’am?” asked Jem. Atticus spoke. “Where’re your pants,
son?” “Pants, sir?” “Pants.” It was no use. In his shorts
before God and everybody. I sighed. “Ah—Mr. Finch?” In the
glare from the streetlight, I could see Dill hatching one: his eyes
widened, his fat cherub face grew rounder. “What is it, Dill?”
asked Atticus. “Ah—I won ‘em from him,” he said vaguely. “Won
them? How?” Dill’s hand sought the back of his head. He brought
it forward and across his forehead. “We were playin‘ strip poker
up yonder by the fishpool,” he said. Jem and I relaxed. The
neighbors seemed satisfied: they all stiffened. But what was strip
poker? We had no chance to find out: Miss Rachel went off like the
town fire siren: “Do-o-o Jee-sus, Dill Harris! Gamblin‘ by my
fishpool? I’ll strip-poker you, sir!” Atticus saved Dill from
immediate dismemberment. “Just a minute, Miss Rachel,” he said.
“I’ve never heard of ‘em doing that before. Were you all
playing cards?” Jem fielded Dill’s fly with his eyes shut: “No
sir, just with matches.” I admired my brother. Matches were
dangerous, but cards were fatal. “Jem, Scout,” said Atticus, “I
don’t want to hear of poker in any form again. Go by Dill’s and
get your pants, Jem. Settle it yourselves.” 30

“Don’t
worry, Dill,” said Jem, as we trotted up the sidewalk, “she ain’t
gonna get you. He’ll talk her out of it. That was fast thinkin‘,
son. Listen… you hear?” We stopped, and heard Atticus’s
voice:“…not serious… they all go through it, Miss Rachel…”
Dill was comforted, but Jem and I weren’t. There was the problem of
Jem showing up some pants in the morning. “‘d give you some of
mine,” said Dill, as we came to Miss Rachel’s steps. Jem said he
couldn’t get in them, but thanks anyway. We said good-bye, and Dill
went inside the house. He evidently remembered he was engaged to me,
for he ran back out and kissed me swiftly in front of Jem. “Yawl
write, hear?” he bawled after us. Had Jem’s pants been safely on
him, we would not have slept much anyway. Every night-sound I heard
from my cot on the back porch was magnified three-fold; every scratch
of feet on gravel was Boo Radley seeking revenge, every passing Negro
laughing in the night was Boo Radley loose and after us; insects
splashing against the screen were Boo Radley’s insane fingers
picking the wire to pieces; the chinaberry trees were malignant,
hovering, alive. I lingered between sleep and wakefulness until I
heard Jem murmur. “Sleep, Little Three-Eyes?” “Are you crazy?”
“Sh-h. Atticus’s light’s out.” In the waning moonlight I saw
Jem swing his feet to the floor. “I’m goin‘ after ’em,” he
said. I sat upright. “You can’t. I won’t let you.” He was
struggling into his shirt. “I’ve got to.” “You do an‘ I’ll
wake up Atticus.” “You do and I’ll kill you.” I pulled him
down beside me on the cot. I tried to reason with him. “Mr.
Nathan’s gonna find ‘em in the morning, Jem. He knows you lost
’em. When he shows ‘em to Atticus it’ll be pretty bad, that’s
all there is to it. Go’n back to bed.” “That’s what I know,”
said Jem. “That’s why I’m goin‘ after ’em.” I began to
feel sick. Going back to that place by himself—I remembered Miss
Stephanie: Mr. Nathan had the other barrel waiting for the next sound
he heard, be it nigger, dog… Jem knew that better than I. I was
desperate: “Look, it ain’t worth it, Jem. A lickin‘ hurts but
it doesn’t last. You’ll get your head shot off, Jem. Please…”
He blew out his breath patiently. “I—it’s like this, Scout,”
he muttered. “Atticus ain’t ever whipped me since I can remember.
I wanta keep it that way.” This was a thought. It seemed that
Atticus threatened us every other day. “You mean he’s never
caught you at anything.” “Maybe so, but—I just wanta keep it
that way, Scout. We shouldn’a done that tonight, Scout.” It was
then, I suppose, that Jem and I first began to part company.
Sometimes I did not understand him, but my periods of bewilderment
were short-lived. This was beyond me. “Please,” I pleaded,
“can’tcha just think about it for a minute—by yourself on that
place—” “Shut up!” “It’s not like he’d never speak to
you again or somethin‘… I’m gonna wake him up, Jem, I swear I
am—” Jem grabbed my pajama collar and wrenched it tight. “Then
I’m goin‘ with you—” I choked. “No you ain’t, you’ll
just make noise.” It was no use. I unlatched the back door and held
it while he crept down the steps. It must have been two o’clock.
The moon was setting and the lattice-work shadows were fading into
fuzzy nothingness. Jem’s white shirt-tail dipped and bobbed like a
small 31

ghost
dancing away to escape the coming morning. A faint breeze stirred and
cooled the sweat running down my sides. He went the back way, through
Deer’s Pasture, across the schoolyard and around to the fence, I
thought—at least that was the way he was headed. It would take
longer, so it was not time to worry yet. I waited until it was time
to worry and listened for Mr. Radley’s shotgun. Then I thought I
heard the back fence squeak. It was wishful thinking. Then I heard
Atticus cough. I held my breath. Sometimes when we made a midnight
pilgrimage to the bathroom we would find him reading. He said he
often woke up during the night, checked on us, and read himself back
to sleep. I waited for his light to go on, straining my eyes to see
it flood the hall. It stayed off, and I breathed again. The
night-crawlers had retired, but ripe chinaberries drummed on the roof
when the wind stirred, and the darkness was desolate with the barking
of distant dogs. There he was, returning to me. His white shirt
bobbed over the back fence and slowly grew larger. He came up the
back steps, latched the door behind him, and sat on his cot.
Wordlessly, he held up his pants. He lay down, and for a while I
heard his cot trembling. Soon he was still. I did not hear him stir
again.

Chapter
7

Jem
stayed moody and silent for a week. As Atticus had once advised me to
do, I tried to climb into Jem’s skin and walk around in it: if I
had gone alone to the Radley Place at two in the morning, my funeral
would have been held the next afternoon. So I left Jem alone and
tried not to bother him. School started. The second grade was as bad
as the first, only worse—they still flashed cards at you and
wouldn’t let you read or write. Miss Caroline’s progress next
door could be estimated by the frequency of laughter; however, the
usual crew had flunked the first grade again, and were helpful in
keeping order. The only thing good about the second grade was that
this year I had to stay as late as Jem, and we usually walked home
together at three o’clock. One afternoon when we were crossing the
schoolyard toward home, Jem suddenly said: “There’s something I
didn’t tell you.” As this was his first complete sentence in
several days, I encouraged him: “About what?” “About that
night.” “You’ve never told me anything about that night,” I
said. Jem waved my words away as if fanning gnats. He was silent for
a while, then he said, “When I went back for my breeches—they
were all in a tangle when I was gettin‘ out of ’em, I couldn’t
get ‘em loose. When I went back—” Jem took a deep breath. “When
I went back, they were folded across the fence… like they were
expectin’ me.” “Across—” “And something else—” Jem’s
voice was flat. “Show you when we get home. They’d been sewed up.
Not like a lady sewed ‘em, like somethin’ I’d try to do. All
crooked. It’s almost like—” “—somebody knew you were comin‘
back for ’em.” Jem shuddered. “Like somebody was readin‘ my
mind… like somebody could tell what I was gonna do. Can’t anybody
tell what I’m gonna do lest they know me, can they, Scout?” Jem’s
question was an appeal. I reassured him: “Can’t anybody tell what
you’re gonna do lest they live in the house with you, and even I
can’t tell sometimes.” We were walking past our tree. In its
knot-hole rested a ball of gray twine. “Don’t take it, Jem,” I
said. “This is somebody’s hidin‘ place.” “I don’t think
so, Scout.” “Yes it is. Somebody like Walter Cunningham comes
down here every recess and hides his things—and we come along and
take ‘em away from him. Listen, let’s leave it and wait a couple
of days. If it ain’t gone then, we’ll take it, okay?” 32

“Okay,
you might be right,” said Jem. “It must be some little kid’s
place—hides his things from the bigger folks. You know it’s only
when school’s in that we’ve found things.” “Yeah,” I said,
“but we never go by here in the summertime.” We went home. Next
morning the twine was where we had left it. When it was still there
on the third day, Jem pocketed it. From then on, we considered
everything we found in the knot-hole our property. The second grade
was grim, but Jem assured me that the older I got the better school
would be, that he started off the same way, and it was not until one
reached the sixth grade that one learned anything of value. The sixth
grade seemed to please him from the beginning: he went through a
brief Egyptian Period that baffled me—he tried to walk flat a great
deal, sticking one arm in front of him and one in back of him,
putting one foot behind the other. He declared Egyptians walked that
way; I said if they did I didn’t see how they got anything done,
but Jem said they accomplished more than the Americans ever did, they
invented toilet paper and perpetual embalming, and asked where would
we be today if they hadn’t? Atticus told me to delete the
adjectives and I’d have the facts. There are no clearly defined
seasons in South Alabama; summer drifts into autumn, and autumn is
sometimes never followed by winter, but turns to a days-old spring
that melts into summer again. That fall was a long one, hardly cool
enough for a light jacket. Jem and I were trotting in our orbit one
mild October afternoon when our knot-hole stopped us again. Something
white was inside this time. Jem let me do the honors: I pulled out
two small images carved in soap. One was the figure of a boy, the
other wore a crude dress. Before I remembered that there was no such
thing as hoo-dooing, I shrieked and threw them down. Jem snatched
them up. “What’s the matter with you?” he yelled. He rubbed the
figures free of red dust. “These are good,” he said. “I’ve
never seen any these good.” He held them down to me. They were
almost perfect miniatures of two children. The boy had on shorts, and
a shock of soapy hair fell to his eyebrows. I looked up at Jem. A
point of straight brown hair kicked downwards from his part. I had
never noticed it before. Jem looked from the girl-doll to me. The
girl-doll wore bangs. So did I. “These are us,” he said. “Who
did ‘em, you reckon?” “Who do we know around here who
whittles?” he asked. “Mr. Avery.” “Mr. Avery just does like
this. I mean carves.” Mr. Avery averaged a stick of stovewood per
week; he honed it down to a toothpick and chewed it. “There’s old
Miss Stephanie Crawford’s sweetheart,” I said. “He carves all
right, but he lives down the country. When would he ever pay any
attention to us?” “Maybe he sits on the porch and looks at us
instead of Miss Stephanie. If I was him, I would.” Jem stared at me
so long I asked what was the matter, but got Nothing, Scout for an
answer. When we went home, Jem put the dolls in his trunk. Less than
two weeks later we found a whole package of chewing gum, which we
enjoyed, the fact that everything on the Radley Place was poison
having slipped Jem’s memory. The following week the knot-hole
yielded a tarnished medal. Jem showed it to Atticus, who said it was
a spelling medal, that before we were born the Maycomb County schools
had spelling contests and awarded medals to the winners. Atticus said
someone must have lost it, and had we asked around? Jem camel-kicked
me when I tried to say where we had found it. Jem asked Atticus if he
remembered anybody who ever won one, and Atticus said no. 33

Our
biggest prize appeared four days later. It was a pocket watch that
wouldn’t run, on a chain with an aluminum knife. “You reckon it’s
white gold, Jem?” “Don’t know. I’ll show it to Atticus.”
Atticus said it would probably be worth ten dollars, knife, chain and
all, if it were new. “Did you swap with somebody at school?” he
asked. “Oh, no sir!” Jem pulled out his grandfather’s watch
that Atticus let him carry once a week if Jem were careful with it.
On the days he carried the watch, Jem walked on eggs. “Atticus, if
it’s all right with you, I’d rather have this one instead. Maybe
I can fix it.” When the new wore off his grandfather’s watch, and
carrying it became a day’s burdensome task, Jem no longer felt the
necessity of ascertaining the hour every five minutes. He did a fair
job, only one spring and two tiny pieces left over, but the watch
would not run. “Oh-h,” he sighed, “it’ll never go. Scout—?”
“Huh?” “You reckon we oughta write a letter to whoever’s
leaving us these things?” “That’d be right nice, Jem, we can
thank ‘em—what’s wrong?” Jem was holding his ears, shaking
his head from side to side. “I don’t get it, I just don’t get
it—I don’t know why, Scout…” He looked toward the livingroom.
“I’ve gotta good mind to tell Atticus—no, I reckon not.”
“I’ll tell him for you.” “No, don’t do that, Scout. Scout?”
“Wha-t?” He had been on the verge of telling me something all
evening; his face would brighten and he would lean toward me, then he
would change his mind. He changed it again. “Oh, nothin‘.”
“Here, let’s write a letter.” I pushed a tablet and pencil
under his nose. “Okay. Dear Mister…” “How do you know it’s
a man? I bet it’s Miss Maudie—been bettin‘ that for a long
time.” “Ar-r, Miss Maudie can’t chew gum—” Jem broke into a
grin. “You know, she can talk real pretty sometimes. One time I
asked her to have a chew and she said no thanks, that—chewing gum
cleaved to her palate and rendered her speechless,” said Jem
carefully. “Doesn’t that sound nice?” “Yeah, she can say nice
things sometimes. She wouldn’t have a watch and chain anyway.”
“Dear sir,” said Jem. “We appreciate the—no, we appreciate
everything which you have put into the tree for us. Yours very truly,
Jeremy Atticus Finch.” “He won’t know who you are if you sign
it like that, Jem.” Jem erased his name and wrote, “Jem Finch.”
I signed, “Jean Louise Finch (Scout),” beneath it. Jem put the
note in an envelope. Next morning on the way to school he ran ahead
of me and stopped at the tree. Jem was facing me when he looked up,
and I saw him go stark white. “Scout!”
I ran to him. Someone had filled our knot-hole with cement. “Don’t
you cry, now, Scout… don’t cry now, don’t you worry-” he
muttered at me all the way to school. When we went home for dinner
Jem bolted his food, ran to the porch and stood on the steps. I
followed him. “Hasn’t passed by yet,” he said. Next day Jem
repeated his vigil and was rewarded. “Hidy do, Mr. Nathan,” he
said. “Morning Jem, Scout,” said Mr. Radley, as he went by. “Mr.
Radley,” said Jem. Mr. Radley turned around. 34

“Mr.
Radley, ah—did you put cement in that hole in that tree down
yonder?” “Yes,” he said. “I filled it up.” “Why’d you
do it, sir?” “Tree’s dying. You plug ‘em with cement when
they’re sick. You ought to know that, Jem.” Jem said nothing more
about it until late afternoon. When we passed our tree he gave it a
meditative pat on its cement, and remained deep in thought. He seemed
to be working himself into a bad humor, so I kept my distance. As
usual, we met Atticus coming home from work that evening. When we
were at our steps Jem said, “Atticus, look down yonder at that
tree, please sir.” “What tree, son?” “The one on the corner
of the Radley lot comin‘ from school.” “Yes?” “Is that tree
dyin‘?” “Why no, son, I don’t think so. Look at the leaves,
they’re all green and full, no brown patches anywhere—” “It
ain’t even sick?” “That tree’s as healthy as you are, Jem.
Why?” “Mr. Nathan Radley said it was dyin‘.” “Well maybe it
is. I’m sure Mr. Radley knows more about his trees than we do.”
Atticus left us on the porch. Jem leaned on a pillar, rubbing his
shoulders against it. “Do you itch, Jem?” I asked as politely as
I could. He did not answer. “Come on in, Jem,” I said. “After
while.” He stood there until nightfall, and I waited for him. When
we went in the house I saw he had been crying; his face was dirty in
the right places, but I thought it odd that I had not heard him.

Chapter
8

For
reasons unfathomable to the most experienced prophets in Maycomb
County, autumn turned to winter that year. We had two weeks of the
coldest weather since 1885, Atticus said. Mr. Avery said it was
written on the Rosetta Stone that when children disobeyed their
parents, smoked cigarettes and made war on each other, the seasons
would change: Jem and I were burdened with the guilt of contributing
to the aberrations of nature, thereby causing unhappiness to our
neighbors and discomfort to ourselves. Old Mrs. Radley died that
winter, but her death caused hardly a ripple—the neighborhood
seldom saw her, except when she watered her cannas. Jem and I decided
that Boo had got her at last, but when Atticus returned from the
Radley house he said she died of natural causes, to our
disappointment. “Ask him,” Jem whispered. “You ask him, you’re
the oldest.” “That’s why you oughta ask him.” “Atticus,”
I said, “did you see Mr. Arthur?” Atticus looked sternly around
his newspaper at me: “I did not.” Jem restrained me from further
questions. He said Atticus was still touchous about us and the
Radleys and it wouldn’t do to push him any. Jem had a notion that
Atticus thought our activities that night last summer were not solely
confined to strip poker. Jem had no firm basis for his ideas, he said
it was merely a twitch. Next morning I awoke, looked out the window
and nearly died of fright. My screams brought Atticus from his
bathroom half-shaven. “The world’s
endin‘,
Atticus! Please do something—!” I dragged him to the window and
pointed. “No it’s not,” he said. “It’s snowing.” Jem
asked Atticus would it keep up. Jem had never seen snow either, but
he knew 35

what
it was. Atticus said he didn’t know any more about snow than Jem
did. “I think, though, if it’s watery like that, it’ll turn to
rain.” The telephone rang and Atticus left the breakfast table to
answer it. “That was Eula May,” he said when he returned. “I
quote—‘As it has not snowed in Maycomb County since 1885, there
will be no school today.’” Eula May was Maycomb’s leading
telephone operator. She was entrusted with issuing public
announcements, wedding invitations, setting off the fire siren, and
giving first-aid instructions when Dr. Reynolds was away. When
Atticus finally called us to order and bade us look at our plates
instead of out the windows, Jem asked, “How do you make a snowman?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” said Atticus. “I don’t want
you all to be disappointed, but I doubt if there’ll be enough snow
for a snowball, even.” Calpurnia came in and said she thought it
was sticking. When we ran to the back yard, it was covered with a
feeble layer of soggy snow. “We shouldn’t walk about in it,”
said Jem. “Look, every step you take’s wasting it.” I looked
back at my mushy footprints. Jem said if we waited until it snowed
some more we could scrape it all up for a snowman. I stuck out my
tongue and caught a fat flake. It burned. “Jem, it’s hot!” “No
it ain’t, it’s so cold it burns. Now don’t eat it, Scout,
you’re wasting it. Let it come down.” “But I want to walk in
it.” “I know what, we can go walk over at Miss Maudie’s.” Jem
hopped across the front yard. I followed in his tracks. When we were
on the sidewalk in front of Miss Maudie’s, Mr. Avery accosted us.
He had a pink face and a big stomach below his belt. “See what
you’ve done?” he said. “Hasn’t snowed in Maycomb since
Appomattox. It’s bad children like you makes the seasons change.”
I wondered if Mr. Avery knew how hopefully we had watched last summer
for him to repeat his performance, and reflected that if this was our
reward, there was something to say for sin. I did not wonder where
Mr. Avery gathered his meteorological statistics: they came straight
from the Rosetta Stone. “Jem Finch, you Jem Finch!” “Miss
Maudie’s callin‘ you, Jem.” “You all stay in the middle of
the yard. There’s some thrift buried under the snow near the porch.
Don’t step on it!” “Yessum!” called Jem. “It’s beautiful,
ain’t it, Miss Maudie?” “Beautiful my hind foot! If it freezes
tonight it’ll carry off all my azaleas!” Miss Maudie’s old
sunhat glistened with snow crystals. She was bending over some small
bushes, wrapping them in burlap bags. Jem asked her what she was
doing that for. “Keep ‘em warm,” she said. “How can flowers
keep warm? They don’t circulate.” “I cannot answer that
question, Jem Finch. All I know is if it freezes tonight these
plants’ll freeze, so you cover ‘em up. Is that clear?” “Yessum.
Miss Maudie?” “What, sir?” “Could Scout and me borrow some of
your snow?” “Heavens alive, take it all! There’s an old peach
basket under the house, haul it off in that.” Miss Maudie’s eyes
narrowed. “Jem Finch, what are you going to do with my snow?”
“You’ll see,” said Jem, and we transferred as much snow as we
could from Miss Maudie’s yard to ours, a slushy operation. “What
are we gonna do, Jem?” I asked. “You’ll see,” he said. “Now
get the basket and haul all the snow you can rake up from 36

the
back yard to the front. Walk back in your tracks, though,” he
cautioned. “Are we gonna have a snow baby, Jem?” “No, a real
snowman. Gotta work hard, now.” Jem ran to the back yard, produced
the garden hoe and began digging quickly behind the woodpile, placing
any worms he found to one side. He went in the house, returned with
the laundry hamper, filled it with earth and carried it to the front
yard. When we had five baskets of earth and two baskets of snow, Jem
said we were ready to begin. “Don’t you think this is kind of a
mess?” I asked. “Looks messy now, but it won’t later,” he
said. Jem scooped up an armful of dirt, patted it into a mound on
which he added another load, and another until he had constructed a
torso. “Jem, I ain’t ever heard of a nigger snowman,” I said.
“He won’t be black long,” he grunted. Jem procured some
peachtree switches from the back yard, plaited them, and bent them
into bones to be covered with dirt. “He looks like Stephanie
Crawford with her hands on her hips,” I said. “Fat in the middle
and little-bitty arms.” “I’ll make ‘em bigger.” Jem sloshed
water over the mud man and added more dirt. He looked thoughtfully at
it for a moment, then he molded a big stomach below the figure’s
waistline. Jem glanced at me, his eyes twinkling: “Mr. Avery’s
sort of shaped like a snowman, ain’t he?” Jem scooped up some
snow and began plastering it on. He permitted me to cover only the
back, saving the public parts for himself. Gradually Mr. Avery turned
white. Using bits of wood for eyes, nose, mouth, and buttons, Jem
succeeded in making Mr. Avery look cross. A stick of stovewood
completed the picture. Jem stepped back and viewed his creation.
“It’s lovely, Jem,” I said. “Looks almost like he’d talk to
you.” “It is, ain’t it?” he said shyly. We could not wait for
Atticus to come home for dinner, but called and said we had a big
surprise for him. He seemed surprised when he saw most of the back
yard in the front yard, but he said we had done a jim-dandy job. “I
didn’t know how you were going to do it,” he said to Jem, “but
from now on I’ll never worry about what’ll become of you, son,
you’ll always have an idea.” Jem’s ears reddened from Atticus’s
compliment, but he looked up sharply when he saw Atticus stepping
back. Atticus squinted at the snowman a while. He grinned, then
laughed. “Son, I can’t tell what you’re going to be—an
engineer, a lawyer, or a portrait painter. You’ve perpetrated a
near libel here in the front yard. We’ve got to disguise this
fellow.” Atticus suggested that Jem hone down his creation’s
front a little, swap a broom for the stovewood, and put an apron on
him. Jem explained that if he did, the snowman would become muddy and
cease to be a snowman. “I don’t care what you do, so long as you
do something,” said Atticus. “You can’t go around making
caricatures of the neighbors.” “Ain’t a characterture,” said
Jem. “It looks just like him.” “Mr. Avery might not think so.”
“I know what!” said Jem. He raced across the street, disappeared
into Miss Maudie’s back yard and returned triumphant. He stuck her
sunhat on the snowman’s head and jammed her hedge-clippers into the
crook of his arm. Atticus said that would be fine. Miss Maudie opened
her front door and came out on the porch. She looked across the
street at us. Suddenly she grinned. “Jem Finch,” she called. “You
devil, bring me back my hat, sir!” Jem looked up at Atticus, who
shook his head. “She’s just fussing,” he said. “She’s
really impressed with your—accomplishments.” 37

Atticus
strolled over to Miss Maudie’s sidewalk, where they engaged in an
arm-waving conversation, the only phrase of which I caught was
“…erected an absolute morphodite in that yard! Atticus, you’ll
never raise ‘em!” The snow stopped in the afternoon, the
temperature dropped, and by nightfall Mr. Avery’s direst
predictions came true: Calpurnia kept every fireplace in the house
blazing, but we were cold. When Atticus came home that evening he
said we were in for it, and asked Calpurnia if she wanted to stay
with us for the night. Calpurnia glanced up at the high ceilings and
long windows and said she thought she’d be warmer at her house.
Atticus drove her home in the car. Before I went to sleep Atticus put
more coal on the fire in my room. He said the thermometer registered
sixteen, that it was the coldest night in his memory, and that our
snowman outside was frozen solid. Minutes later, it seemed, I was
awakened by someone shaking me. Atticus’s overcoat was spread
across me. “Is it morning already?” “Baby, get up.” Atticus
was holding out my bathrobe and coat. “Put your robe on first,”
he said. Jem was standing beside Atticus, groggy and tousled. He was
holding his overcoat closed at the neck, his other hand was jammed
into his pocket. He looked strangely overweight. “Hurry, hon,”
said Atticus. “Here’re your shoes and socks.” Stupidly, I put
them on. “Is it morning?” “No, it’s a little after one. Hurry
now.” That something was wrong finally got through to me. “What’s
the matter?” By then he did not have to tell me. Just as the birds
know where to go when it rains, I knew when there was trouble in our
street. Soft taffeta-like sounds and muffled scurrying sounds filled
me with helpless dread. “Whose is it?” “Miss Maudie’s, hon,”
said Atticus gently. At the front door, we saw fire spewing from Miss
Maudie’s diningroom windows. As if to confirm what we saw, the town
fire siren wailed up the scale to a treble pitch and remained there,
screaming. “It’s gone, ain’t it?” moaned Jem. “I expect
so,” said Atticus. “Now listen, both of you. Go down and stand in
front of the Radley Place. Keep out of the way, do you hear? See
which way the wind’s blowing?” “Oh,” said Jem. “Atticus,
reckon we oughta start moving the furniture out?” “Not yet, son.
Do as I tell you. Run now. Take care of Scout, you hear? Don’t let
her out of your sight.” With a push, Atticus started us toward the
Radley front gate. We stood watching the street fill with men and
cars while fire silently devoured Miss Maudie’s house. “Why don’t
they hurry, why don’t they hurry…” muttered Jem. We saw why.
The old fire truck, killed by the cold, was being pushed from town by
a crowd of men. When the men attached its hose to a hydrant, the hose
burst and water shot up, tinkling down on the pavement. “Oh-h Lord,
Jem…” Jem put his arm around me. “Hush, Scout,” he said. “It
ain’t time to worry yet. I’ll let you know when.” The men of
Maycomb, in all degrees of dress and undress, took furniture from
Miss Maudie’s house to a yard across the street. I saw Atticus
carrying Miss Maudie’s heavy oak rocking chair, and thought it
sensible of him to save what she valued most. Sometimes we heard
shouts. Then Mr. Avery’s face appeared in an upstairs window. He
pushed a mattress out the window into the street and threw down
furniture until men shouted, “Come down from there, Dick! The
stairs are going! Get outta there, Mr. Avery!” Mr. Avery began
climbing through the window. “Scout, he’s stuck…” breathed
Jem. “Oh God…” 38

Mr.
Avery was wedged tightly. I buried my head under Jem’s arm and
didn’t look again until Jem cried, “He’s got loose, Scout! He’s
all right!” I looked up to see Mr. Avery cross the upstairs porch.
He swung his legs over the railing and was sliding down a pillar when
he slipped. He fell, yelled, and hit Miss Maudie’s shrubbery.
Suddenly I noticed that the men were backing away from Miss Maudie’s
house, moving down the street toward us. They were no longer carrying
furniture. The fire was well into the second floor and had eaten its
way to the roof: window frames were black against a vivid orange
center. “Jem, it looks like a pumpkin—” “Scout, look!”
Smoke was rolling off our house and Miss Rachel’s house like fog
off a riverbank, and men were pulling hoses toward them. Behind us,
the fire truck from Abbottsville screamed around the curve and
stopped in front of our house. “That book…” I said. “What?”
said Jem. “That Tom Swift book, it ain’t mine, it’s Dill’s…”
“Don’t worry, Scout, it ain’t time to worry yet,” said Jem.
He pointed. “Looka yonder.” In a group of neighbors, Atticus was
standing with his hands in his overcoat pockets. He might have been
watching a football game. Miss Maudie was beside him. “See there,
he’s not worried yet,” said Jem. “Why ain’t he on top of one
of the houses?” “He’s too old, he’d break his neck.” “You
think we oughta make him get our stuff out?” “Let’s don’t
pester him, he’ll know when it’s time,” said Jem. The
Abbottsville fire truck began pumping water on our house; a man on
the roof pointed to places that needed it most. I watched our
Absolute Morphodite go black and crumble; Miss Maudie’s sunhat
settled on top of the heap. I could not see her hedge-clippers. In
the heat between our house, Miss Rachel’s and Miss Maudie’s, the
men had long ago shed coats and bathrobes. They worked in pajama tops
and nightshirts stuffed into their pants, but I became aware that I
was slowly freezing where I stood. Jem tried to keep me warm, but his
arm was not enough. I pulled free of it and clutched my shoulders. By
dancing a little, I could feel my feet. Another fire truck appeared
and stopped in front of Miss Stephanie Crawford’s. There was no
hydrant for another hose, and the men tried to soak her house with
hand extinguishers. Miss Maudie’s tin roof quelled the flames.
Roaring, the house collapsed; fire gushed everywhere, followed by a
flurry of blankets from men on top of the adjacent houses, beating
out sparks and burning chunks of wood. It was dawn before the men
began to leave, first one by one, then in groups. They pushed the
Maycomb fire truck back to town, the Abbottsville truck departed, the
third one remained. We found out next day it had come from Clark’s
Ferry, sixty miles away. Jem and I slid across the street. Miss
Maudie was staring at the smoking black hole in her yard, and Atticus
shook his head to tell us she did not want to talk. He led us home,
holding onto our shoulders to cross the icy street. He said Miss
Maudie would stay with Miss Stephanie for the time being. “Anybody
want some hot chocolate?” he asked. I shuddered when Atticus
started a fire in the kitchen stove. As we drank our cocoa I noticed
Atticus looking at me, first with curiosity, then with sternness. “I
thought I told you and Jem to stay put,” he said. “Why, we did.
We stayed—” “Then whose blanket is that?” “Blanket?” “Yes
ma’am, blanket. It isn’t ours.” I looked down and found myself
clutching a brown woolen blanket I was wearing 39

around
my shoulders, squaw-fashion. “Atticus, I don’t know, sir… I—”
I turned to Jem for an answer, but Jem was even more bewildered than
I. He said he didn’t know how it got there, we did exactly as
Atticus had told us, we stood down by the Radley gate away from
everybody, we didn’t move an inch—Jem stopped. “Mr. Nathan was
at the fire,” he babbled, “I saw him, I saw him, he was tuggin‘
that mattress—Atticus, I swear…” “That’s all right, son.”
Atticus grinned slowly. “Looks like all of Maycomb was out tonight,
in one way or another. Jem, there’s some wrapping paper in the
pantry, I think. Go get it and we’ll—” “Atticus, no sir!”
Jem seemed to have lost his mind. He began pouring out our secrets
right and left in total disregard for my safety if not for his own,
omitting nothing, knot-hole, pants and all. “…Mr. Nathan put
cement in that tree, Atticus, an‘ he did it to stop us findin’
things—he’s crazy, I reckon, like they say, but Atticus, I swear
to God he ain’t ever harmed us, he ain’t ever hurt us, he coulda
cut my throat from ear to ear that night but he tried to mend my
pants instead… he ain’t ever hurt us, Atticus—” Atticus said,
“Whoa, son,” so gently that I was greatly heartened. It was
obvious that he had not followed a word Jem said, for all Atticus
said was, “You’re right. We’d better keep this and the blanket
to ourselves. Someday, maybe, Scout can thank him for covering her
up.” “Thank who?” I asked. “Boo Radley. You were so busy
looking at the fire you didn’t know it when he put the blanket
around you.” My stomach turned to water and I nearly threw up when
Jem held out the blanket and crept toward me. “He sneaked out of
the house—turn ‘round—sneaked up, an’ went like this!”
Atticus said dryly, “Do not let this inspire you to further glory,
Jeremy.” Jem scowled, “I ain’t gonna do anything to him,” but
I watched the spark of fresh adventure leave his eyes. “Just think,
Scout,” he said, “if you’d just turned around, you’da seen
him.” Calpurnia woke us at noon. Atticus had said we need not go to
school that day, we’d learn nothing after no sleep. Calpurnia said
for us to try and clean up the front yard. Miss Maudie’s sunhat was
suspended in a thin layer of ice, like a fly in amber, and we had to
dig under the dirt for her hedge-clippers. We found her in her back
yard, gazing at her frozen charred azaleas. “We’re bringing back
your things, Miss Maudie,” said Jem. “We’re awful sorry.”
Miss Maudie looked around, and the shadow of her old grin crossed her
face. “Always wanted a smaller house, Jem Finch. Gives me more
yard. Just think, I’ll have more room for my azaleas now!” “You
ain’t grievin‘, Miss Maudie?” I asked, surprised. Atticus said
her house was nearly all she had. “Grieving, child? Why, I hated
that old cow barn. Thought of settin‘ fire to it a hundred times
myself, except they’d lock me up.” “But—” “Don’t you
worry about me, Jean Louise Finch. There are ways of doing things you
don’t know about. Why, I’ll build me a little house and take me a
couple of roomers and—gracious, I’ll have the finest yard in
Alabama. Those Bellingraths’ll look plain puny when I get started!”
Jem and I looked at each other. “How’d it catch, Miss Maudie?”
he asked. “I don’t know, Jem. Probably the flue in the kitchen. I
kept a fire in there last night for my potted plants. Hear you had
some unexpected company last night, Miss Jean Louise.” “How’d
you know?” “Atticus told me on his way to town this morning. Tell
you the truth, I’d like to’ve been 40

with
you. And I’d‘ve had sense enough to turn around, too.” Miss
Maudie puzzled me. With most of her possessions gone and her beloved
yard a shambles, she still took a lively and cordial interest in
Jem’s and my affairs. She must have seen my perplexity. She said,
“Only thing I worried about last night was all the danger and
commotion it caused. This whole neighborhood could have gone up. Mr.
Avery’ll be in bed for a week—he’s right stove up. He’s too
old to do things like that and I told him so. Soon as I can get my
hands clean and when Stephanie Crawford’s not looking, I’ll make
him a Lane cake. That Stephanie’s been after my recipe for thirty
years, and if she thinks I’ll give it to her just because I’m
staying with her she’s got another think coming.” I reflected
that if Miss Maudie broke down and gave it to her, Miss Stephanie
couldn’t follow it anyway. Miss Maudie had once let me see it:
among other things, the recipe called for one large cup of sugar. It
was a still day. The air was so cold and clear we heard the
courthouse clock clank, rattle and strain before it struck the hour.
Miss Maudie’s nose was a color I had never seen before, and I
inquired about it. “I’ve been out here since six o’clock,”
she said. “Should be frozen by now.” She held up her hands. A
network of tiny lines crisscrossed her palms, brown with dirt and
dried blood. “You’ve ruined ‘em,” said Jem. “Why don’t
you get a colored man?” There was no note of sacrifice in his voice
when he added, “Or Scout’n’me, we can help you.” Miss Maudie
said, “Thank you sir, but you’ve got a job of your own over
there.” She pointed to our yard. “You mean the Morphodite?” I
asked. “Shoot, we can rake him up in a jiffy.” Miss Maudie stared
down at me, her lips moving silently. Suddenly she put her hands to
her head and whooped. When we left her, she was still chuckling. Jem
said he didn’t know what was the matter with her—that was just
Miss Maudie.

Chapter
9

“You
can just take that back, boy!” This order, given by me to Cecil
Jacobs, was the beginning of a rather thin time for Jem and me. My
fists were clenched and I was ready to let fly. Atticus had promised
me he would wear me out if he ever heard of me fighting any more; I
was far too old and too big for such childish things, and the sooner
I learned to hold in, the better off everybody would be. I soon
forgot. Cecil Jacobs made me forget. He had announced in the
schoolyard the day before that Scout Finch’s daddy defended
niggers. I denied it, but told Jem. “What’d he mean sayin‘
that?” I asked. “Nothing,” Jem said. “Ask Atticus, he’ll
tell you.” “Do you defend niggers, Atticus?” I asked him that
evening. “Of course I do. Don’t say nigger, Scout. That’s
common.” “‘s what everybody at school says.” “From now on
it’ll be everybody less one—” “Well if you don’t want me to
grow up talkin‘ that way, why do you send me to school?” My
father looked at me mildly, amusement in his eyes. Despite our
compromise, my campaign to avoid school had continued in one form or
another since my first day’s dose of it: the beginning of last
September had brought on sinking spells, dizziness, and mild gastric
complaints. I went so far as to pay a nickel for the privilege of
rubbing my head against the head of Miss Rachel’s cook’s son, who
was afflicted with a tremendous ringworm. It didn’t take. But I was
worrying another bone. “Do all lawyers defend n-Negroes, Atticus?”
“Of course they do, Scout.” “Then why did Cecil say you
defended niggers? He made it sound like you were runnin‘ a still.”
41

Atticus
sighed. “I’m simply defending a Negro—his name’s Tom
Robinson. He lives in that little settlement beyond the town dump.
He’s a member of Calpurnia’s church, and Cal knows his family
well. She says they’re clean-living folks. Scout, you aren’t old
enough to understand some things yet, but there’s been some high
talk around town to the effect that I shouldn’t do much about
defending this man. It’s a peculiar case—it won’t come to trial
until summer session. John Taylor was kind enough to give us a
postponement…” “If you shouldn’t be defendin‘ him, then why
are you doin’ it?” “For a number of reasons,” said Atticus.
“The main one is, if I didn’t I couldn’t hold up my head in
town, I couldn’t represent this county in the legislature, I
couldn’t even tell you or Jem not to do something again.” “You
mean if you didn’t defend that man, Jem and me wouldn’t have to
mind you any more?” “That’s about right.” “Why?” “Because
I could never ask you to mind me again. Scout, simply by the nature
of the work, every lawyer gets at least one case in his lifetime that
affects him personally. This one’s mine, I guess. You might hear
some ugly talk about it at school, but do one thing for me if you
will: you just hold your head high and keep those fists down. No
matter what anybody says to you, don’t you let ‘em get your goat.
Try fighting with your head for a change… it’s a good one, even
if it does resist learning.” “Atticus, are we going to win it?”
“No, honey.” “Then why—” “Simply because we were licked a
hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to
win,” Atticus said. “You sound like Cousin Ike Finch,” I said.
Cousin Ike Finch was Maycomb County’s sole surviving Confederate
veteran. He wore a General Hood type beard of which he was
inordinately vain. At least once a year Atticus, Jem and I called on
him, and I would have to kiss him. It was horrible. Jem and I would
listen respectfully to Atticus and Cousin Ike rehash the war. “Tell
you, Atticus,” Cousin Ike would say, “the Missouri Compromise was
what licked us, but if I had to go through it agin I’d walk every
step of the way there an‘ every step back jist like I did before
an’ furthermore we’d whip ‘em this time… now in 1864, when
Stonewall Jackson came around by—I beg your pardon, young folks.
Ol’ Blue Light was in heaven then, God rest his saintly brow…”
“Come here, Scout,” said Atticus. I crawled into his lap and
tucked my head under his chin. He put his arms around me and rocked
me gently. “It’s different this time,” he said. “This time we
aren’t fighting the Yankees, we’re fighting our friends. But
remember this, no matter how bitter things get, they’re still our
friends and this is still our home.” With this in mind, I faced
Cecil Jacobs in the schoolyard next day: “You gonna take that back,
boy?” “You gotta make me first!” he yelled. “My folks said
your daddy was a disgrace an‘ that nigger oughta hang from the
water-tank!” I drew a bead on him, remembered what Atticus had
said, then dropped my fists and walked away, “Scout’s a
cow—ward!” ringing in my ears. It was the first time I ever
walked away from a fight. Somehow, if I fought Cecil I would let
Atticus down. Atticus so rarely asked Jem and me to do something for
him, I could take being called a coward for him. I felt extremely
noble for having remembered, and remained noble for three weeks. Then
Christmas came and disaster struck. Jem and I viewed Christmas with
mixed feelings. The good side was the tree and Uncle Jack Finch.
Every Christmas Eve day we met Uncle Jack at Maycomb Junction, and he
would spend a week with us. A flip of the coin revealed the
uncompromising lineaments of Aunt Alexandra and 42

Francis.
I suppose I should include Uncle Jimmy, Aunt Alexandra’s husband,
but as he never spoke a word to me in my life except to say, “Get
off the fence,” once, I never saw any reason to take notice of him.
Neither did Aunt Alexandra. Long ago, in a burst of friendliness,
Aunty and Uncle Jimmy produced a son named Henry, who left home as
soon as was humanly possible, married, and produced Francis. Henry
and his wife deposited Francis at his grandparents’ every
Christmas, then pursued their own pleasures. No amount of sighing
could induce Atticus to let us spend Christmas day at home. We went
to Finch’s Landing every Christmas in my memory. The fact that
Aunty was a good cook was some compensation for being forced to spend
a religious holiday with Francis Hancock. He was a year older than I,
and I avoided him on principle: he enjoyed everything I disapproved
of, and disliked my ingenuous diversions. Aunt Alexandra was
Atticus’s sister, but when Jem told me about changelings and
siblings, I decided that she had been swapped at birth, that my
grandparents had perhaps received a Crawford instead of a Finch. Had
I ever harbored the mystical notions about mountains that seem to
obsess lawyers and judges, Aunt Alexandra would have been analogous
to Mount Everest: throughout my early life, she was cold and there.
When Uncle Jack jumped down from the train Christmas Eve day, we had
to wait for the porter to hand him two long packages. Jem and I
always thought it funny when Uncle Jack pecked Atticus on the cheek;
they were the only two men we ever saw kiss each other. Uncle Jack
shook hands with Jem and swung me high, but not high enough: Uncle
Jack was a head shorter than Atticus; the baby of the family, he was
younger than Aunt Alexandra. He and Aunty looked alike, but Uncle
Jack made better use of his face: we were never wary of his sharp
nose and chin. He was one of the few men of science who never
terrified me, probably because he never behaved like a doctor.
Whenever he performed a minor service for Jem and me, as removing a
splinter from a foot, he would tell us exactly what he was going to
do, give us an estimation of how much it would hurt, and explain the
use of any tongs he employed. One Christmas I lurked in corners
nursing a twisted splinter in my foot, permitting no one to come near
me. When Uncle Jack caught me, he kept me laughing about a preacher
who hated going to church so much that every day he stood at his gate
in his dressing-gown, smoking a hookah and delivering five-minute
sermons to any passers-by who desired spiritual comfort. I
interrupted to make Uncle Jack let me know when he would pull it out,
but he held up a bloody splinter in a pair of tweezers and said he
yanked it while I was laughing, that was what was known as
relativity. “What’s in those packages?” I asked him, pointing
to the long thin parcels the porter had given him. “None of your
business,” he said. Jem said, “How’s Rose Aylmer?” Rose
Aylmer was Uncle Jack’s cat. She was a beautiful yellow female
Uncle Jack said was one of the few women he could stand permanently.
He reached into his coat pocket and brought out some snapshots. We
admired them. “She’s gettin‘ fat,” I said. “I should think
so. She eats all the leftover fingers and ears from the hospital.”
“Aw, that’s a damn story,” I said. “I beg your pardon?”
Atticus said, “Don’t pay any attention to her, Jack. She’s
trying you out. Cal says she’s been cussing fluently for a week,
now.” Uncle Jack raised his eyebrows and said nothing. I was
proceeding on the dim theory, aside from the innate attractiveness of
such words, that if Atticus discovered I had picked them up at school
he wouldn’t make me go. But at supper that evening when I asked him
to pass the damn ham, please, Uncle Jack pointed at me. “See me
afterwards, young lady,” he said. 43

When
supper was over, Uncle Jack went to the livingroom and sat down. He
slapped his thighs for me to come sit on his lap. I liked to smell
him: he was like a bottle of alcohol and something pleasantly sweet.
He pushed back my bangs and looked at me. “You’re more like
Atticus than your mother,” he said. “You’re also growing out of
your pants a little.” “I reckon they fit all right.” “You
like words like damn and hell now, don’t you?” I said I reckoned
so. “Well I don’t,” said Uncle Jack, “not unless there’s
extreme provocation connected with ‘em. I’ll be here a week, and
I don’t want to hear any words like that while I’m here. Scout,
you’ll get in trouble if you go around saying things like that. You
want to grow up to be a lady, don’t you?” I said not
particularly. “Of course you do. Now let’s get to the tree.” We
decorated the tree until bedtime, and that night I dreamed of the two
long packages for Jem and me. Next morning Jem and I dived for them:
they were from Atticus, who had written Uncle Jack to get them for
us, and they were what we had asked for. “Don’t point them in the
house,” said Atticus, when Jem aimed at a picture on the wall.
“You’ll have to teach ‘em to shoot,” said Uncle Jack. “That’s
your job,” said Atticus. “I merely bowed to the inevitable.” It
took Atticus’s courtroom voice to drag us away from the tree. He
declined to let us take our air rifles to the Landing (I had already
begun to think of shooting Francis) and said if we made one false
move he’d take them away from us for good. Finch’s Landing
consisted of three hundred and sixty-six steps down a high bluff and
ending in a jetty. Farther down stream, beyond the bluff, were traces
of an old cotton landing, where Finch Negroes had loaded bales and
produce, unloaded blocks of ice, flour and sugar, farm equipment, and
feminine apparel. A two-rut road ran from the riverside and vanished
among dark trees. At the end of the road was a two-storied white
house with porches circling it upstairs and downstairs. In his old
age, our ancestor Simon Finch had built it to please his nagging
wife; but with the porches all resemblance to ordinary houses of its
era ended. The internal arrangements of the Finch house were
indicative of Simon’s guilelessness and the absolute trust with
which he regarded his offspring. There were six bedrooms upstairs,
four for the eight female children, one for Welcome Finch, the sole
son, and one for visiting relatives. Simple enough; but the
daughters’ rooms could be reached only by one staircase, Welcome’s
room and the guestroom only by another. The Daughters’ Staircase
was in the ground-floor bedroom of their parents, so Simon always
knew the hours of his daughters’ nocturnal comings and goings.
There was a kitchen separate from the rest of the house, tacked onto
it by a wooden catwalk; in the back yard was a rusty bell on a pole,
used to summon field hands or as a distress signal; a widow’s walk
was on the roof, but no widows walked there—from it, Simon oversaw
his overseer, watched the river-boats, and gazed into the lives of
surrounding landholders. There went with the house the usual legend
about the Yankees: one Finch female, recently engaged, donned her
complete trousseau to save it from raiders in the neighborhood; she
became stuck in the door to the Daughters’ Staircase but was doused
with water and finally pushed through. When we arrived at the
Landing, Aunt Alexandra kissed Uncle Jack, Francis kissed Uncle Jack,
Uncle Jimmy shook hands silently with Uncle Jack, Jem and I gave our
presents to Francis, who gave us a present. Jem felt his age and
gravitated to the adults, leaving me to entertain our cousin. Francis
was eight and slicked back his hair. “What’d you get for
Christmas?” I asked politely. “Just what I asked for,” he said.
Francis had requested a pair of knee-pants, a red 44

leather
booksack, five shirts and an untied bow tie. “That’s nice,” I
lied. “Jem and me got air rifles, and Jem got a chemistry set—”
“A toy one, I reckon.” “No, a real one. He’s gonna make me
some invisible ink, and I’m gonna write to Dill in it.” Francis
asked what was the use of that. “Well, can’t you just see his
face when he gets a letter from me with nothing in it? It’ll drive
him nuts.” Talking to Francis gave me the sensation of settling
slowly to the bottom of the ocean. He was the most boring child I
ever met. As he lived in Mobile, he could not inform on me to school
authorities, but he managed to tell everything he knew to Aunt
Alexandra, who in turn unburdened herself to Atticus, who either
forgot it or gave me hell, whichever struck his fancy. But the only
time I ever heard Atticus speak sharply to anyone was when I once
heard him say, “Sister, I do the best I can with them!” It had
something to do with my going around in overalls. Aunt Alexandra was
fanatical on the subject of my attire. I could not possibly hope to
be a lady if I wore breeches; when I said I could do nothing in a
dress, she said I wasn’t supposed to be doing things that required
pants. Aunt Alexandra’s vision of my deportment involved playing
with small stoves, tea sets, and wearing the Add-A-Pearl necklace she
gave me when I was born; furthermore, I should be a ray of sunshine
in my father’s lonely life. I suggested that one could be a ray of
sunshine in pants just as well, but Aunty said that one had to behave
like a sunbeam, that I was born good but had grown progressively
worse every year. She hurt my feelings and set my teeth permanently
on edge, but when I asked Atticus about it, he said there were
already enough sunbeams in the family and to go on about my business,
he didn’t mind me much the way I was. At Christmas dinner, I sat at
the little table in the diningroom; Jem and Francis sat with the
adults at the dining table. Aunty had continued to isolate me long
after Jem and Francis graduated to the big table. I often wondered
what she thought I’d do, get up and throw something? I sometimes
thought of asking her if she would let me sit at the big table with
the rest of them just once, I would prove to her how civilized I
could be; after all, I ate at home every day with no major mishaps.
When I begged Atticus to use his influence, he said he had none—we
were guests, and we sat where she told us to sit. He also said Aunt
Alexandra didn’t understand girls much, she’d never had one. But
her cooking made up for everything: three kinds of meat, summer
vegetables from her pantry shelves; peach pickles, two kinds of cake
and ambrosia constituted a modest Christmas dinner. Afterwards, the
adults made for the livingroom and sat around in a dazed condition.
Jem lay on the floor, and I went to the back yard. “Put on your
coat,” said Atticus dreamily, so I didn’t hear him. Francis sat
beside me on the back steps. “That was the best yet,” I said.
“Grandma’s a wonderful cook,” said Francis. “She’s gonna
teach me how.” “Boys don’t cook.” I giggled at the thought of
Jem in an apron. “Grandma says all men should learn to cook, that
men oughta be careful with their wives and wait on ‘em when they
don’t feel good,” said my cousin. “I don’t want Dill waitin‘
on me,” I said. “I’d rather wait on him.” “Dill?” “Yeah.
Don’t say anything about it yet, but we’re gonna get married as
soon as we’re big enough. He asked me last summer.” Francis
hooted. “What’s the matter with him?” I asked. “Ain’t
anything the matter with him.” “You mean that little runt Grandma
says stays with Miss Rachel every summer?” “That’s exactly who
I mean.” “I know all about him,” said Francis. “What about
him?” “Grandma says he hasn’t got a home—” 45

“Has
too, he lives in Meridian.” “—he just gets passed around from
relative to relative, and Miss Rachel keeps him every summer.”
“Francis, that’s not so!” Francis grinned at me. “You’re
mighty dumb sometimes, Jean Louise. Guess you don’t know any
better, though.” “What do you mean?” “If Uncle Atticus lets
you run around with stray dogs, that’s his own business, like
Grandma says, so it ain’t your fault. I guess it ain’t your fault
if Uncle Atticus is a nigger-lover besides, but I’m here to tell
you it certainly does mortify the rest of the family—” “Francis,
what the hell do you mean?” “Just what I said. Grandma says it’s
bad enough he lets you all run wild, but now he’s turned out a
nigger-lover we’ll never be able to walk the streets of Maycomb
agin. He’s ruinin‘ the family, that’s what he’s doin’.”
Francis rose and sprinted down the catwalk to the old kitchen. At a
safe distance he called, “He’s nothin‘ but a nigger-lover!”
“He is not!” I roared. “I don’t know what you’re talkin‘
about, but you better cut it out this red hot minute!” I leaped off
the steps and ran down the catwalk. It was easy to collar Francis. I
said take it back quick. Francis jerked loose and sped into the old
kitchen. “Nigger-lover!” he yelled. When stalking one’s prey,
it is best to take one’s time. Say nothing, and as sure as eggs he
will become curious and emerge. Francis appeared at the kitchen door.
“You still mad, Jean Louise?” he asked tentatively. “Nothing to
speak of,” I said. Francis came out on the catwalk. “You gonna
take it back, Fra—ancis?” But I was too quick on the draw.
Francis shot back into the kitchen, so I retired to the steps. I
could wait patiently. I had sat there perhaps five minutes when I
heard Aunt Alexandra speak: “Where’s Francis?” “He’s out
yonder in the kitchen.” “He knows he’s not supposed to play in
there.” Francis came to the door and yelled, “Grandma, she’s
got me in here and she won’t let me out!” “What is all this,
Jean Louise?” I looked up at Aunt Alexandra. “I haven’t got him
in there, Aunty, I ain’t holdin‘ him.” “Yes she is,”
shouted Francis, “she won’t let me out!” “Have you all been
fussing?” “Jean Louise got mad at me, Grandma,” called Francis.
“Francis, come out of there! Jean Louise, if I hear another word
out of you I’ll tell your father. Did I hear you say hell a while
ago?” “Nome.” “I thought I did. I’d better not hear it
again.” Aunt Alexandra was a back-porch listener. The moment she
was out of sight Francis came out head up and grinning. “Don’t
you fool with me,” he said. He jumped into the yard and kept his
distance, kicking tufts of grass, turning around occasionally to
smile at me. Jem appeared on the porch, looked at us, and went away.
Francis climbed the mimosa tree, came down, put his hands in his
pockets and strolled around the yard. “Hah!” he said. I asked him
who he thought he was, Uncle Jack? Francis said he reckoned I got
told, for me to just sit there and leave him alone. “I ain’t
botherin‘ you,” I said. Francis looked at me carefully, concluded
that I had been sufficiently subdued, and crooned softly,
“Nigger-lover…” This time, I split my knuckle to the bone on
his front teeth. My left impaired, I sailed in with my right, but not
for long. Uncle Jack pinned my arms to my sides and said, “Stand
still!” 46

Aunt
Alexandra ministered to Francis, wiping his tears away with her
handkerchief, rubbing his hair, patting his cheek. Atticus, Jem, and
Uncle Jimmy had come to the back porch when Francis started yelling.
“Who started this?” said Uncle Jack. Francis and I pointed at
each other. “Grandma,” he bawled, “she called me a whore-lady
and jumped on me!” “Is that true, Scout?” said Uncle Jack. “I
reckon so.” When Uncle Jack looked down at me, his features were
like Aunt Alexandra’s. “You know I told you you’d get in
trouble if you used words like that? I told you, didn’t I?” “Yes
sir, but—” “Well, you’re in trouble now. Stay there.” I was
debating whether to stand there or run, and tarried in indecision a
moment too long: I turned to flee but Uncle Jack was quicker. I found
myself suddenly looking at a tiny ant struggling with a bread crumb
in the grass. “I’ll never speak to you again as long as I live! I
hate you an‘ despise you an’ hope you die tomorrow!” A
statement that seemed to encourage Uncle Jack, more than anything. I
ran to Atticus for comfort, but he said I had it coming and it was
high time we went home. I climbed into the back seat of the car
without saying good-bye to anyone, and at home I ran to my room and
slammed the door. Jem tried to say something nice, but I wouldn’t
let him. When I surveyed the damage there were only seven or eight
red marks, and I was reflecting upon relativity when someone knocked
on the door. I asked who it was; Uncle Jack answered. “Go away!”
Uncle Jack said if I talked like that he’d lick me again, so I was
quiet. When he entered the room I retreated to a corner and turned my
back on him. “Scout,” he said, “do you still hate me?” “Go
on, please sir.” “Why, I didn’t think you’d hold it against
me,” he said. “I’m disappointed in you—you had that coming
and you know it.” “Didn’t either.” “Honey, you can’t go
around calling people—” “You ain’t fair,” I said, “you
ain’t fair.” Uncle Jack’s eyebrows went up. “Not fair? How
not?” “You’re real nice, Uncle Jack, an‘ I reckon I love you
even after what you did, but you don’t understand children much.”
Uncle Jack put his hands on his hips and looked down at me. “And
why do I not understand children, Miss Jean Louise? Such conduct as
yours required little understanding. It was obstreperous, disorderly
and abusive—” “You gonna give me a chance to tell you? I don’t
mean to sass you, I’m just tryin‘ to tell you.” Uncle Jack sat
down on the bed. His eyebrows came together, and he peered up at me
from under them. “Proceed,” he said. I took a deep breath. “Well,
in the first place you never stopped to gimme a chance to tell you my
side of it—you just lit right into me. When Jem an‘ I fuss
Atticus doesn’t ever just listen to Jem’s side of it, he hears
mine too, an’ in the second place you told me never to use words
like that except in ex-extreme provocation, and Francis provocated me
enough to knock his block off—” Uncle Jack scratched his head.
“What was your side of it, Scout?” “Francis called Atticus
somethin‘, an’ I wasn’t about to take it off him.” “What
did Francis call him?” “A nigger-lover. I ain’t very sure what
it means, but the way Francis said it—tell you one thing right now,
Uncle Jack, I’ll be—I swear before God if I’ll sit there and
let him say somethin‘ about Atticus.” 47

“He
called Atticus that?” “Yes sir, he did, an‘ a lot more. Said
Atticus’d be the ruination of the family an’ he let Jem an me run
wild…” From the look on Uncle Jack’s face, I thought I was in
for it again. When he said, “We’ll see about this,” I knew
Francis was in for it. “I’ve a good mind to go out there
tonight.” “Please sir, just let it go. Please.” “I’ve no
intention of letting it go,” he said. “Alexandra should know
about this. The idea of—wait’ll I get my hands on that boy…”
“Uncle Jack, please promise me somethin‘, please sir. Promise you
won’t tell Atticus about this. He—he asked me one time not to let
anything I heard about him make me mad, an’ I’d ruther him think
we were fightin‘ about somethin’ else instead. Please promise…”
“But I don’t like Francis getting away with something like that—”
“He didn’t. You reckon you could tie up my hand? It’s still
bleedin‘ some.” “Of course I will, baby. I know of no hand I
would be more delighted to tie up. Will you come this way?” Uncle
Jack gallantly bowed me to the bathroom. While he cleaned and
bandaged my knuckles, he entertained me with a tale about a funny
nearsighted old gentleman who had a cat named Hodge, and who counted
all the cracks in the sidewalk when he went to town. “There now,”
he said. “You’ll have a very unladylike scar on your wedding-ring
finger.” “Thank you sir. Uncle Jack?” “Ma’am?” “What’s
a whore-lady?” Uncle Jack plunged into another long tale about an
old Prime Minister who sat in the House of Commons and blew feathers
in the air and tried to keep them there when all about him men were
losing their heads. I guess he was trying to answer my question, but
he made no sense whatsoever. Later, when I was supposed to be in bed,
I went down the hall for a drink of water and heard Atticus and Uncle
Jack in the livingroom: “I shall never marry, Atticus.” “Why?”
“I might have children.” Atticus said, “You’ve a lot to
learn, Jack.” “I know. Your daughter gave me my first lessons
this afternoon. She said I didn’t understand children much and told
me why. She was quite right. Atticus, she told me how I should have
treated her—oh dear, I’m so sorry I romped on her.” Atticus
chuckled. “She earned it, so don’t feel too remorseful.” I
waited, on tenterhooks, for Uncle Jack to tell Atticus my side of it.
But he didn’t. He simply murmured, “Her use of bathroom invective
leaves nothing to the imagination. But she doesn’t know the meaning
of half she says—she asked me what a whore-lady was…” “Did
you tell her?” “No, I told her about Lord Melbourne.” “Jack!
When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness’ sake.
But don’t make a production of it. Children are children, but they
can spot an evasion quicker than adults, and evasion simply muddles
‘em. No,” my father mused, “you had the right answer this
afternoon, but the wrong reasons. Bad language is a stage all
children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they’re
not attracting attention with it. Hotheadedness isn’t. Scout’s
got to learn to keep her head and learn soon, with what’s in store
for her these next few months. She’s coming along, though. Jem’s
getting older and she follows his example a good bit now. All she
needs is assistance sometimes.” “Atticus, you’ve never laid a
hand on her.” “I admit that. So far I’ve been able to get by
with threats. Jack, she minds me as well 48

as
she can. Doesn’t come up to scratch half the time, but she tries.”
“That’s not the answer,” said Uncle Jack. “No, the answer is
she knows I know she tries. That’s what makes the difference. What
bothers me is that she and Jem will have to absorb some ugly things
pretty soon. I’m not worried about Jem keeping his head, but
Scout’d just as soon jump on someone as look at him if her pride’s
at stake…” I waited for Uncle Jack to break his promise. He still
didn’t. “Atticus, how bad is this going to be? You haven’t had
too much chance to discuss it.” “It couldn’t be worse, Jack.
The only thing we’ve got is a black man’s word against the
Ewells‘. The evidence boils down to you-did—I-didn’t. The jury
couldn’t possibly be expected to take Tom Robinson’s word against
the Ewells’—are you acquainted with the Ewells?” Uncle Jack
said yes, he remembered them. He described them to Atticus, but
Atticus said, “You’re a generation off. The present ones are the
same, though.” “What are you going to do, then?” “Before I’m
through, I intend to jar the jury a bit—I think we’ll have a
reasonable chance on appeal, though. I really can’t tell at this
stage, Jack. You know, I’d hoped to get through life without a case
of this kind, but John Taylor pointed at me and said, ‘You’re
It.’” “Let this cup pass from you, eh?” “Right. But do you
think I could face my children otherwise? You know what’s going to
happen as well as I do, Jack, and I hope and pray I can get Jem and
Scout through it without bitterness, and most of all, without
catching Maycomb’s usual disease. Why reasonable people go stark
raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I
don’t pretend to understand… I just hope that Jem and Scout come
to me for their answers instead of listening to the town. I hope they
trust me enough… Jean Louise?” My scalp jumped. I stuck my head
around the corner. “Sir?” “Go to bed.” I scurried to my room
and went to bed. Uncle Jack was a prince of a fellow not to let me
down. But I never figured out how Atticus knew I was listening, and
it was not until many years later that I realized he wanted me to
hear every word he said.

Chapter
10

Atticus
was feeble: he was nearly fifty. When Jem and I asked him why he was
so old, he said he got started late, which we felt reflected upon his
abilities and manliness. He was much older than the parents of our
school contemporaries, and there was nothing Jem or I could say about
him when our classmates said, “My father—” Jem was football
crazy. Atticus was never too tired to play keep-away, but when Jem
wanted to tackle him Atticus would say, “I’m too old for that,
son.” Our father didn’t do anything. He worked in an office, not
in a drugstore. Atticus did not drive a dump-truck for the county, he
was not the sheriff, he did not farm, work in a garage, or do
anything that could possibly arouse the admiration of anyone. Besides
that, he wore glasses. He was nearly blind in his left eye, and said
left eyes were the tribal curse of the Finches. Whenever he wanted to
see something well, he turned his head and looked from his right eye.
He did not do the things our schoolmates’ fathers did: he never
went hunting, he did not play poker or fish or drink or smoke. He sat
in the livingroom and read. With these attributes, however, he would
not remain as inconspicuous as we wished him to: that year, the
school buzzed with talk about him defending Tom Robinson, none of
which was complimentary. After my bout with Cecil Jacobs when I
committed myself to a policy of cowardice, word got around that Scout
Finch wouldn’t fight any more, her daddy wouldn’t let her. This
was not entirely correct: I wouldn’t fight publicly for Atticus,
but the family was private ground. I would fight anyone from a third
cousin upwards 49

tooth
and nail. Francis Hancock, for example, knew that. When he gave us
our air-rifles Atticus wouldn’t teach us to shoot. Uncle Jack
instructed us in the rudiments thereof; he said Atticus wasn’t
interested in guns. Atticus said to Jem one day, “I’d rather you
shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you’ll go after
birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but
remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” That was the only
time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I
asked Miss Maudie about it. “Your father’s right,” she said.
“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy.
They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs,
they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s
why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” “Miss Maudie, this is an
old neighborhood, ain’t it?” “Been here longer than the town.”
“Nome, I mean the folks on our street are all old. Jem and me’s
the only children around here. Mrs. Dubose is close on to a hundred
and Miss Rachel’s old and so are you and Atticus.” “I don’t
call fifty very old,” said Miss Maudie tartly. “Not being wheeled
around yet, am I? Neither’s your father. But I must say Providence
was kind enough to burn down that old mausoleum of mine, I’m too
old to keep it up—maybe you’re right, Jean Louise, this is a
settled neighborhood. You’ve never been around young folks much,
have you?” “Yessum, at school.” “I mean young grown-ups.
You’re lucky, you know. You and Jem have the benefit of your
father’s age. If your father was thirty you’d find life quite
different.” “I sure would. Atticus can’t do anything…”
“You’d be surprised,” said Miss Maudie. “There’s life in
him yet.” “What can he do?” “Well, he can make somebody’s
will so airtight can’t anybody meddle with it.” “Shoot…”
“Well, did you know he’s the best checker-player in this town?
Why, down at the Landing when we were coming up, Atticus Finch could
beat everybody on both sides of the river.” “Good Lord, Miss
Maudie, Jem and me beat him all the time.” “It’s about time you
found out it’s because he lets you. Did you know he can play a
Jew’s Harp?” This modest accomplishment served to make me even
more ashamed of him. “Well…” she said. “Well, what, Miss
Maudie?” “Well nothing. Nothing—it seems with all that you’d
be proud of him. Can’t everybody play a Jew’s Harp. Now keep out
of the way of the carpenters. You’d better go home, I’ll be in my
azaleas and can’t watch you. Plank might hit you.” I went to the
back yard and found Jem plugging away at a tin can, which seemed
stupid with all the bluejays around. I returned to the front yard and
busied myself for two hours erecting a complicated breastworks at the
side of the porch, consisting of a tire, an orange crate, the laundry
hamper, the porch chairs, and a small U.S. flag Jem gave me from a
popcorn box. When Atticus came home to dinner he found me crouched
down aiming across the street. “What are you shooting at?” “Miss
Maudie’s rear end.” Atticus turned and saw my generous target
bending over her bushes. He pushed his hat to the back of his head
and crossed the street. “Maudie,” he called, “I thought I’d
better warn you. You’re in considerable peril.” Miss Maudie
straightened up and looked toward me. She said, “Atticus, you are a
devil from hell.” When Atticus returned he told me to break camp.
“Don’t you ever let me catch you pointing that gun at anybody
again,” he said. 50

I
wished my father was a devil from hell. I sounded out Calpurnia on
the subject. “Mr. Finch? Why, he can do lots of things.” “Like
what?” I asked. Calpurnia scratched her head. “Well, I don’t
rightly know,” she said. Jem underlined it when he asked Atticus if
he was going out for the Methodists and Atticus said he’d break his
neck if he did, he was just too old for that sort of thing. The
Methodists were trying to pay off their church mortgage, and had
challenged the Baptists to a game of touch football. Everybody in
town’s father was playing, it seemed, except Atticus. Jem said he
didn’t even want to go, but he was unable to resist football in any
form, and he stood gloomily on the sidelines with Atticus and me
watching Cecil Jacobs’s father make touchdowns for the Baptists.
One Saturday Jem and I decided to go exploring with our air-rifles to
see if we could find a rabbit or a squirrel. We had gone about five
hundred yards beyond the Radley Place when I noticed Jem squinting at
something down the street. He had turned his head to one side and was
looking out of the corners of his eyes. “Whatcha looking at?”
“That old dog down yonder,” he said. “That’s old Tim Johnson,
ain’t it?” “Yeah.” Tim Johnson was the property of Mr. Harry
Johnson who drove the Mobile bus and lived on the southern edge of
town. Tim was a liver-colored bird dog, the pet of Maycomb. “What’s
he doing?” “I don’t know, Scout. We better go home.” “Aw
Jem, it’s February.” “I don’t care, I’m gonna tell Cal.”
We raced home and ran to the kitchen. “Cal,” said Jem, “can you
come down the sidewalk a minute?” “What for, Jem? I can’t come
down the sidewalk every time you want me.” “There’s somethin‘
wrong with an old dog down yonder.” Calpurnia sighed. “I can’t
wrap up any dog’s foot now. There’s some gauze in the bathroom,
go get it and do it yourself.” Jem shook his head. “He’s sick,
Cal. Something’s wrong with him.” “What’s he doin‘, trying
to catch his tail?” “No, he’s doin‘ like this.” Jem gulped
like a goldfish, hunched his shoulders and twitched his torso. “He’s
goin‘ like that, only not like he means to.” “Are you telling
me a story, Jem Finch?” Calpurnia’s voice hardened. “No Cal, I
swear I’m not.” “Was he runnin‘?” “No, he’s just
moseyin‘ along, so slow you can’t hardly tell it. He’s comin’
this way.” Calpurnia rinsed her hands and followed Jem into the
yard. “I don’t see any dog,” she said. She followed us beyond
the Radley Place and looked where Jem pointed. Tim Johnson was not
much more than a speck in the distance, but he was closer to us. He
walked erratically, as if his right legs were shorter than his left
legs. He reminded me of a car stuck in a sandbed. “He’s gone
lopsided,” said Jem. Calpurnia stared, then grabbed us by the
shoulders and ran us home. She shut the wood door behind us, went to
the telephone and shouted, “Gimme Mr. Finch’s office!” “Mr.
Finch!” she shouted. “This is Cal. I swear to God there’s a mad
dog down the street a piece—he’s comin‘ this way, yes sir,
he’s—Mr. Finch, I declare he is—old Tim Johnson, yes sir…
yessir… yes—” She hung up and shook her head when we tried to
ask her what Atticus had said. She rattled the telephone hook and
said, “Miss Eula May—now ma’am, I’m through talkin‘ to 51

Mr.
Finch, please don’t connect me no more—listen, Miss Eula May, can
you call Miss Rachel and Miss Stephanie Crawford and whoever’s got
a phone on this street and tell ’em a mad dog’s comin‘? Please
ma’am!” Calpurnia listened. “I know it’s February, Miss Eula
May, but I know a mad dog when I see one. Please ma’am hurry!”
Calpurnia asked Jem, “Radleys got a phone?” Jem looked in the
book and said no. “They won’t come out anyway, Cal.” “I don’t
care, I’m gonna tell ‘em.” She ran to the front porch, Jem and
I at her heels. “You stay in that house!” she yelled. Calpurnia’s
message had been received by the neighborhood. Every wood door within
our range of vision was closed tight. We saw no trace of Tim Johnson.
We watched Calpurnia running toward the Radley Place, holding her
skirt and apron above her knees. She went up to the front steps and
banged on the door. She got no answer, and she shouted, “Mr.
Nathan, Mr. Arthur, mad dog’s comin‘! Mad dog’s comin’!”
“She’s supposed to go around in back,” I said. Jem shook his
head. “Don’t make any difference now,” he said. Calpurnia
pounded on the door in vain. No one acknowledged her warning; no one
seemed to have heard it. As Calpurnia sprinted to the back porch a
black Ford swung into the driveway. Atticus and Mr. Heck Tate got
out. Mr. Heck Tate was the sheriff of Maycomb County. He was as tall
as Atticus, but thinner. He was long-nosed, wore boots with shiny
metal eye-holes, boot pants and a lumber jacket. His belt had a row
of bullets sticking in it. He carried a heavy rifle. When he and
Atticus reached the porch, Jem opened the door. “Stay inside, son,”
said Atticus. “Where is he, Cal?” “He oughta be here by now,”
said Calpurnia, pointing down the street. “Not runnin‘, is he?”
asked Mr. Tate. “Naw sir, he’s in the twitchin‘ stage, Mr.
Heck.” “Should we go after him, Heck?” asked Atticus. “We
better wait, Mr. Finch. They usually go in a straight line, but you
never can tell. He might follow the curve—hope he does or he’ll
go straight in the Radley back yard. Let’s wait a minute.” “Don’t
think he’ll get in the Radley yard,” said Atticus. “Fence’ll
stop him. He’ll probably follow the road…” I thought mad dogs
foamed at the mouth, galloped, leaped and lunged at throats, and I
thought they did it in August. Had Tim Johnson behaved thus, I would
have been less frightened. Nothing is more deadly than a deserted,
waiting street. The trees were still, the mockingbirds were silent,
the carpenters at Miss Maudie’s house had vanished. I heard Mr.
Tate sniff, then blow his nose. I saw him shift his gun to the crook
of his arm. I saw Miss Stephanie Crawford’s face framed in the
glass window of her front door. Miss Maudie appeared and stood beside
her. Atticus put his foot on the rung of a chair and rubbed his hand
slowly down the side of his thigh. “There he is,” he said softly.
Tim Johnson came into sight, walking dazedly in the inner rim of the
curve parallel to the Radley house. “Look at him,” whispered Jem.
“Mr. Heck said they walked in a straight line. He can’t even stay
in the road.” “He looks more sick than anything,” I said. “Let
anything get in front of him and he’ll come straight at it.” Mr.
Tate put his hand to his forehead and leaned forward. “He’s got
it all right, Mr. Finch.” Tim Johnson was advancing at a snail’s
pace, but he was not playing or sniffing at foliage: he seemed
dedicated to one course and motivated by an invisible force that was
inching him toward us. We could see him shiver like a horse shedding
flies; his jaw 52

opened
and shut; he was alist, but he was being pulled gradually toward us.
“He’s lookin‘ for a place to die,” said Jem. Mr. Tate turned
around. “He’s far from dead, Jem, he hasn’t got started yet.”
Tim Johnson reached the side street that ran in front of the Radley
Place, and what remained of his poor mind made him pause and seem to
consider which road he would take. He made a few hesitant steps and
stopped in front of the Radley gate; then he tried to turn around,
but was having difficulty. Atticus said, “He’s within range,
Heck. You better get him before he goes down the side street—Lord
knows who’s around the corner. Go inside, Cal.” Calpurnia opened
the screen door, latched it behind her, then unlatched it and held
onto the hook. She tried to block Jem and me with her body, but we
looked out from beneath her arms. “Take him, Mr. Finch.” Mr. Tate
handed the rifle to Atticus; Jem and I nearly fainted. “Don’t
waste time, Heck,” said Atticus. “Go on.” “Mr. Finch, this is
a one-shot job.” Atticus shook his head vehemently: “Don’t just
stand there, Heck! He won’t wait all day for you—” “For God’s
sake, Mr. Finch, look where he is! Miss and you’ll go straight into
the Radley house! I can’t shoot that well and you know it!” “I
haven’t shot a gun in thirty years—” Mr. Tate almost threw the
rifle at Atticus. “I’d feel mighty comfortable if you did now,”
he said. In a fog, Jem and I watched our father take the gun and walk
out into the middle of the street. He walked quickly, but I thought
he moved like an underwater swimmer: time had slowed to a nauseating
crawl. When Atticus raised his glasses Calpurnia murmured, “Sweet
Jesus help him,” and put her hands to her cheeks. Atticus pushed
his glasses to his forehead; they slipped down, and he dropped them
in the street. In the silence, I heard them crack. Atticus rubbed his
eyes and chin; we saw him blink hard. In front of the Radley gate,
Tim Johnson had made up what was left of his mind. He had finally
turned himself around, to pursue his original course up our street.
He made two steps forward, then stopped and raised his head. We saw
his body go rigid. With movements so swift they seemed simultaneous,
Atticus’s hand yanked a ball-tipped lever as he brought the gun to
his shoulder. The rifle cracked. Tim Johnson leaped, flopped over and
crumpled on the sidewalk in a brown-and-white heap. He didn’t know
what hit him. Mr. Tate jumped off the porch and ran to the Radley
Place. He stopped in front of the dog, squatted, turned around and
tapped his finger on his forehead above his left eye. “You were a
little to the right, Mr. Finch,” he called. “Always was,”
answered Atticus. “If I had my ‘druthers I’d take a shotgun.”
He stooped and picked up his glasses, ground the broken lenses to
powder under his heel, and went to Mr. Tate and stood looking down at
Tim Johnson. Doors opened one by one, and the neighborhood slowly
came alive. Miss Maudie walked down the steps with Miss Stephanie
Crawford. Jem was paralyzed. I pinched him to get him moving, but
when Atticus saw us coming he called, “Stay where you are.” When
Mr. Tate and Atticus returned to the yard, Mr. Tate was smiling.
“I’ll have Zeebo collect him,” he said. “You haven’t forgot
much, Mr. Finch. They say it never leaves you.” Atticus was silent.
“Atticus?” said Jem. “Yes?” “Nothin‘.” “I saw that,
One-Shot Finch!” 53

Atticus
wheeled around and faced Miss Maudie. They looked at one another
without saying anything, and Atticus got into the sheriff’s car.
“Come here,” he said to Jem. “Don’t you go near that dog, you
understand? Don’t go near him, he’s just as dangerous dead as
alive.” “Yes sir,” said Jem. “Atticus—” “What, son?”
“Nothing.” “What’s the matter with you, boy, can’t you
talk?” said Mr. Tate, grinning at Jem. “Didn’t you know your
daddy’s—” “Hush, Heck,” said Atticus, “let’s go back to
town.” When they drove away, Jem and I went to Miss Stephanie’s
front steps. We sat waiting for Zeebo to arrive in the garbage truck.
Jem sat in numb confusion, and Miss Stephanie said, “Uh, uh, uh,
who’da thought of a mad dog in February? Maybe he wadn’t mad,
maybe he was just crazy. I’d hate to see Harry Johnson’s face
when he gets in from the Mobile run and finds Atticus Finch’s shot
his dog. Bet he was just full of fleas from somewhere—” Miss
Maudie said Miss Stephanie’d be singing a different tune if Tim
Johnson was still coming up the street, that they’d find out soon
enough, they’d send his head to Montgomery. Jem became vaguely
articulate: “‘d you see him, Scout? ’d you see him just
standin‘ there?… ’n‘ all of a sudden he just relaxed all
over, an’ it looked like that gun was a part of him… an‘ he did
it so quick, like… I hafta aim for ten minutes ’fore I can hit
somethin‘…” Miss Maudie grinned wickedly. “Well now, Miss
Jean Louise,” she said, “still think your father can’t do
anything? Still ashamed of him?” “Nome,” I said meekly. “Forgot
to tell you the other day that besides playing the Jew’s Harp,
Atticus Finch was the deadest shot in Maycomb County in his time.”
“Dead shot…” echoed Jem. “That’s what I said, Jem Finch.
Guess you’ll change your tune now. The very idea, didn’t you know
his nickname was Ol‘ One-Shot when he was a boy? Why, down at the
Landing when he was coming up, if he shot fifteen times and hit
fourteen doves he’d complain about wasting ammunition.” “He
never said anything about that,” Jem muttered. “Never said
anything about it, did he?” “No ma’am.” “Wonder why he
never goes huntin‘ now,” I said. “Maybe I can tell you,” said
Miss Maudie. “If your father’s anything, he’s civilized in his
heart. Marksmanship’s a gift of God, a talent—oh, you have to
practice to make it perfect, but shootin’s different from playing
the piano or the like. I think maybe he put his gun down when he
realized that God had given him an unfair advantage over most living
things. I guess he decided he wouldn’t shoot till he had to, and he
had to today.” “Looks like he’d be proud of it,” I said.
“People in their right minds never take pride in their talents,”
said Miss Maudie. We saw Zeebo drive up. He took a pitchfork from the
back of the garbage truck and gingerly lifted Tim Johnson. He pitched
the dog onto the truck, then poured something from a gallon jug on
and around the spot where Tim fell. “Don’t yawl come over here
for a while,” he called. When we went home I told Jem we’d really
have something to talk about at school on Monday. Jem turned on me.
“Don’t say anything about it, Scout,” he said. “What? I
certainly am. Ain’t everybody’s daddy the deadest shot in Maycomb
County.” Jem said, “I reckon if he’d wanted us to know it,
he’da told us. If he was proud of it, he’da told us.” “Maybe
it just slipped his mind,” I said. 54

“Naw,
Scout, it’s something you wouldn’t understand. Atticus is real
old, but I wouldn’t care if he couldn’t do anything—I wouldn’t
care if he couldn’t do a blessed thing.” Jem picked up a rock and
threw it jubilantly at the carhouse. Running after it, he called
back: “Atticus is a gentleman, just like me!”

Chapter
11

When
we were small, Jem and I confined our activities to the southern
neighborhood, but when I was well into the second grade at school and
tormenting Boo Radley became passe, the business section of Maycomb
drew us frequently up the street past the real property of Mrs. Henry
Lafayette Dubose. It was impossible to go to town without passing her
house unless we wished to walk a mile out of the way. Previous minor
encounters with her left me with no desire for more, but Jem said I
had to grow up some time. Mrs. Dubose lived alone except for a Negro
girl in constant attendance, two doors up the street from us in a
house with steep front steps and a dog-trot hall. She was very old;
she spent most of each day in bed and the rest of it in a wheelchair.
It was rumored that she kept a CSA pistol concealed among her
numerous shawls and wraps. Jem and I hated her. If she was on the
porch when we passed, we would be raked by her wrathful gaze,
subjected to ruthless interrogation regarding our behavior, and given
a melancholy prediction on what we would amount to when we grew up,
which was always nothing. We had long ago given up the idea of
walking past her house on the opposite side of the street; that only
made her raise her voice and let the whole neighborhood in on it. We
could do nothing to please her. If I said as sunnily as I could,
“Hey, Mrs. Dubose,” I would receive for an answer, “Don’t you
say hey to me, you ugly girl! You say good afternoon, Mrs. Dubose!”
She was vicious. Once she heard Jem refer to our father as “Atticus”
and her reaction was apoplectic. Besides being the sassiest, most
disrespectful mutts who ever passed her way, we were told that it was
quite a pity our father had not remarried after our mother’s death.
A lovelier lady than our mother never lived, she said, and it was
heartbreaking the way Atticus Finch let her children run wild. I did
not remember our mother, but Jem did—he would tell me about her
sometimes—and he went livid when Mrs. Dubose shot us this message.
Jem, having survived Boo Radley, a mad dog and other terrors, had
concluded that it was cowardly to stop at Miss Rachel’s front steps
and wait, and had decreed that we must run as far as the post office
corner each evening to meet Atticus coming from work. Countless
evenings Atticus would find Jem furious at something Mrs. Dubose had
said when we went by. “Easy does it, son,” Atticus would say.
“She’s an old lady and she’s ill. You just hold your head high
and be a gentleman. Whatever she says to you, it’s your job not to
let her make you mad.” Jem would say she must not be very sick, she
hollered so. When the three of us came to her house, Atticus would
sweep off his hat, wave gallantly to her and say, “Good evening,
Mrs. Dubose! You look like a picture this evening.” I never heard
Atticus say like a picture of what. He would tell her the courthouse
news, and would say he hoped with all his heart she’d have a good
day tomorrow. He would return his hat to his head, swing me to his
shoulders in her very presence, and we would go home in the twilight.
It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and
had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived. The
day after Jem’s twelfth birthday his money was burning up his
pockets, so we headed for town in the early afternoon. Jem thought he
had enough to buy a miniature steam engine for himself and a twirling
baton for me. I had long had my eye on that baton: it was at V. J.
Elmore’s, it was bedecked with sequins and tinsel, it cost
seventeen cents. It was then my burning ambition to grow up and twirl
with the Maycomb County High School band. Having developed my talent
to 55

where
I could throw up a stick and almost catch it coming down, I had
caused Calpurnia to deny me entrance to the house every time she saw
me with a stick in my hand. I felt that I could overcome this defect
with a real baton, and I thought it generous of Jem to buy one for
me. Mrs. Dubose was stationed on her porch when we went by. “Where
are you two going at this time of day?” she shouted. “Playing
hooky, I suppose. I’ll just call up the principal and tell him!”
She put her hands on the wheels of her chair and executed a perfect
right face. “Aw, it’s Saturday, Mrs. Dubose,” said Jem. “Makes
no difference if it’s Saturday,” she said obscurely. “I wonder
if your father knows where you are?” “Mrs. Dubose, we’ve been
goin‘ to town by ourselves since we were this high.” Jem placed
his hand palm down about two feet above the sidewalk. “Don’t you
lie to me!” she yelled. “Jeremy Finch, Maudie Atkinson told me
you broke down her scuppernong arbor this morning. She’s going to
tell your father and then you’ll wish you never saw the light of
day! If you aren’t sent to the reform school before next week, my
name’s not Dubose!” Jem, who hadn’t been near Miss Maudie’s
scuppernong arbor since last summer, and who knew Miss Maudie
wouldn’t tell Atticus if he had, issued a general denial. “Don’t
you contradict me!” Mrs. Dubose bawled. “And you—” she
pointed an arthritic finger at me—“what are you doing in those
overalls? You should be in a dress and camisole, young lady! You’ll
grow up waiting on tables if somebody doesn’t change your ways—a
Finch waiting on tables at the O.K. Café—hah!” I was terrified.
The O.K. Café was a dim organization on the north side of the
square. I grabbed Jem’s hand but he shook me loose. “Come on,
Scout,” he whispered. “Don’t pay any attention to her, just
hold your head high and be a gentleman.” But Mrs. Dubose held us:
“Not only a Finch waiting on tables but one in the courthouse
lawing for niggers!” Jem stiffened. Mrs. Dubose’s shot had gone
home and she knew it: “Yes indeed, what has this world come to when
a Finch goes against his raising? I’ll tell you!” She put her
hand to her mouth. When she drew it away, it trailed a long silver
thread of saliva. “Your father’s no better than the niggers and
trash he works for!” Jem was scarlet. I pulled at his sleeve, and
we were followed up the sidewalk by a philippic on our family’s
moral degeneration, the major premise of which was that half the
Finches were in the asylum anyway, but if our mother were living we
would not have come to such a state. I wasn’t sure what Jem
resented most, but I took umbrage at Mrs. Dubose’s assessment of
the family’s mental hygiene. I had become almost accustomed to
hearing insults aimed at Atticus. But this was the first one coming
from an adult. Except for her remarks about Atticus, Mrs. Dubose’s
attack was only routine. There was a hint of summer in the air—in
the shadows it was cool, but the sun was warm, which meant good times
coming: no school and Dill. Jem bought his steam engine and we went
by Elmore’s for my baton. Jem took no pleasure in his acquisition;
he jammed it in his pocket and walked silently beside me toward home.
On the way home I nearly hit Mr. Link Deas, who said, “Look out
now, Scout!” when I missed a toss, and when we approached Mrs.
Dubose’s house my baton was grimy from having picked it up out of
the dirt so many times. She was not on the porch. In later years, I
sometimes wondered exactly what made Jem do it, what made him break
the bonds of “You just be a gentleman, son,” and the phase of
self-conscious rectitude he had recently entered. Jem had probably
stood as much guff about Atticus lawing for niggers as had I, and I
took it for granted that he kept his temper—he had a naturally
tranquil disposition and a slow fuse. At the time, however, I thought
the only explanation for what he did was that for a few minutes he
simply went mad. 56

What
Jem did was something I’d do as a matter of course had I not been
under Atticus’s interdict, which I assumed included not fighting
horrible old ladies. We had just come to her gate when Jem snatched
my baton and ran flailing wildly up the steps into Mrs. Dubose’s
front yard, forgetting everything Atticus had said, forgetting that
she packed a pistol under her shawls, forgetting that if Mrs. Dubose
missed, her girl Jessie probably wouldn’t. He did not begin to calm
down until he had cut the tops off every camellia bush Mrs. Dubose
owned, until the ground was littered with green buds and leaves. He
bent my baton against his knee, snapped it in two and threw it down.
By that time I was shrieking. Jem yanked my hair, said he didn’t
care, he’d do it again if he got a chance, and if I didn’t shut
up he’d pull every hair out of my head. I didn’t shut up and he
kicked me. I lost my balance and fell on my face. Jem picked me up
roughly but looked like he was sorry. There was nothing to say. We
did not choose to meet Atticus coming home that evening. We skulked
around the kitchen until Calpurnia threw us out. By some voo-doo
system Calpurnia seemed to know all about it. She was a less than
satisfactory source of palliation, but she did give Jem a hot
biscuit-and-butter which he tore in half and shared with me. It
tasted like cotton. We went to the livingroom. I picked up a football
magazine, found a picture of Dixie Howell, showed it to Jem and said,
“This looks like you.” That was the nicest thing I could think to
say to him, but it was no help. He sat by the windows, hunched down
in a rocking chair, scowling, waiting. Daylight faded. Two geological
ages later, we heard the soles of Atticus’s shoes scrape the front
steps. The screen door slammed, there was a pause—Atticus was at
the hat rack in the hall—and we heard him call, “Jem!” His
voice was like the winter wind. Atticus switched on the ceiling light
in the livingroom and found us there, frozen still. He carried my
baton in one hand; its filthy yellow tassel trailed on the rug. He
held out his other hand; it contained fat camellia buds. “Jem,”
he said, “are you responsible for this?” “Yes sir.” “Why’d
you do it?” Jem said softly, “She said you lawed for niggers and
trash.” “You did this because she said that?” Jem’s lips
moved, but his, “Yes sir,” was inaudible. “Son, I have no doubt
that you’ve been annoyed by your contemporaries about me lawing for
niggers, as you say, but to do something like this to a sick old lady
is inexcusable. I strongly advise you to go down and have a talk with
Mrs. Dubose,” said Atticus. “Come straight home afterward.” Jem
did not move. “Go on, I said.” I followed Jem out of the
livingroom. “Come back here,” Atticus said to me. I came back.
Atticus picked up the Mobile
Press and
sat down in the rocking chair Jem had vacated. For the life of me, I
did not understand how he could sit there in cold blood and read a
newspaper when his only son stood an excellent chance of being
murdered with a Confederate Army relic. Of course Jem antagonized me
sometimes until I could kill him, but when it came down to it he was
all I had. Atticus did not seem to realize this, or if he did he
didn’t care. I hated him for that, but when you are in trouble you
become easily tired: soon I was hiding in his lap and his arms were
around me. “You’re mighty big to be rocked,” he said. “You
don’t care what happens to him,” I said. “You just send him on
to get shot at when all he was doin‘ was standin’ up for you.”
Atticus pushed my head under his chin. “It’s not time to worry
yet,” he said. “I never thought Jem’d be the one to lose his
head over this—thought I’d have more trouble with 57

you.”
I said I didn’t see why we had to keep our heads anyway, that
nobody I knew at school had to keep his head about anything. “Scout,”
said Atticus, “when summer comes you’ll have to keep your head
about far worse things… it’s not fair for you and Jem, I know
that, but sometimes we have to make the best of things, and the way
we conduct ourselves when the chips are down—well, all I can say
is, when you and Jem are grown, maybe you’ll look back on this with
some compassion and some feeling that I didn’t let you down. This
case, Tom Robinson’s case, is something that goes to the essence of
a man’s conscience—Scout, I couldn’t go to church and worship
God if I didn’t try to help that man.” “Atticus, you must be
wrong…” “How’s that?” “Well, most folks seem to think
they’re right and you’re wrong…” “They’re certainly
entitled to think that, and they’re entitled to full respect for
their opinions,” said Atticus, “but before I can live with other
folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t
abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.” When Jem
returned, he found me still in Atticus’s lap, “Well, son?” said
Atticus. He set me on my feet, and I made a secret reconnaissance of
Jem. He seemed to be all in one piece, but he had a queer look on his
face. Perhaps she had given him a dose of calomel. “I cleaned it up
for her and said I was sorry, but I ain’t, and that I’d work on
‘em ever Saturday and try to make ’em grow back out.” “There
was no point in saying you were sorry if you aren’t,” said
Atticus. “Jem, she’s old and ill. You can’t hold her
responsible for what she says and does. Of course, I’d rather she’d
have said it to me than to either of you, but we can’t always have
our ‘druthers.” Jem seemed fascinated by a rose in the carpet.
“Atticus,” he said, “she wants me to read to her.” “Read to
her?” “Yes sir. She wants me to come every afternoon after school
and Saturdays and read to her out loud for two hours. Atticus, do I
have to?” “Certainly.” “But she wants me to do it for a
month.” “Then you’ll do it for a month.” Jem planted his big
toe delicately in the center of the rose and pressed it in. Finally
he said, “Atticus, it’s all right on the sidewalk but inside
it’s—it’s all dark and creepy. There’s shadows and things on
the ceiling…” Atticus smiled grimly. “That should appeal to
your imagination. Just pretend you’re inside the Radley house.”
The following Monday afternoon Jem and I climbed the steep front
steps to Mrs. Dubose’s house and padded down the open hallway. Jem,
armed with Ivanhoe
and
full of superior knowledge, knocked at the second door on the left.
“Mrs. Dubose?” he called. Jessie opened the wood door and
unlatched the screen door. “Is that you, Jem Finch?” she said.
“You got your sister with you. I don’t know—” “Let ‘em
both in, Jessie,” said Mrs. Dubose. Jessie admitted us and went off
to the kitchen. An oppressive odor met us when we crossed the
threshold, an odor I had met many times in rain-rotted gray houses
where there are coal-oil lamps, water dippers, and unbleached
domestic sheets. It always made me afraid, expectant, watchful. In
the corner of the room was a brass bed, and in the bed was Mrs.
Dubose. I wondered if Jem’s activities had put her there, and for a
moment I felt sorry for her. She was lying under a pile of quilts and
looked almost friendly. There was a marble-topped washstand by her
bed; on it were a glass with a teaspoon in it, a red ear syringe, a
box of absorbent cotton, and a steel alarm clock standing on 58

three
tiny legs. “So you brought that dirty little sister of yours, did
you?” was her greeting. Jem said quietly, “My sister ain’t
dirty and I ain’t scared of you,” although I noticed his knees
shaking. I was expecting a tirade, but all she said was, “You may
commence reading, Jeremy.” Jem sat down in a cane-bottom chair and
opened Ivanhoe.
I pulled up another one and sat beside him. “Come closer,” said
Mrs. Dubose. “Come to the side of the bed.” We moved our chairs
forward. This was the nearest I had ever been to her, and the thing I
wanted most to do was move my chair back again. She was horrible. Her
face was the color of a dirty pillowcase, and the corners of her
mouth glistened with wet, which inched like a glacier down the deep
grooves enclosing her chin. Old-age liver spots dotted her cheeks,
and her pale eyes had black pinpoint pupils. Her hands were knobby,
and the cuticles were grown up over her fingernails. Her bottom plate
was not in, and her upper lip protruded; from time to time she would
draw her nether lip to her upper plate and carry her chin with it.
This made the wet move faster. I didn’t look any more than I had
to. Jem reopened Ivanhoe
and
began reading. I tried to keep up with him, but he read too fast.
When Jem came to a word he didn’t know, he skipped it, but Mrs.
Dubose would catch him and make him spell it out. Jem read for
perhaps twenty minutes, during which time I looked at the
soot-stained mantelpiece, out the window, anywhere to keep from
looking at her. As he read along, I noticed that Mrs. Dubose’s
corrections grew fewer and farther between, that Jem had even left
one sentence dangling in mid-air. She was not listening. I looked
toward the bed. Something had happened to her. She lay on her back,
with the quilts up to her chin. Only her head and shoulders were
visible. Her head moved slowly from side to side. From time to time
she would open her mouth wide, and I could see her tongue undulate
faintly. Cords of saliva would collect on her lips; she would draw
them in, then open her mouth again. Her mouth seemed to have a
private existence of its own. It worked separate and apart from the
rest of her, out and in, like a clam hole at low tide. Occasionally
it would say, “Pt,” like some viscous substance coming to a boil.
I pulled Jem’s sleeve. He looked at me, then at the bed. Her head
made its regular sweep toward us, and Jem said, “Mrs. Dubose, are
you all right?” She did not hear him. The alarm clock went off and
scared us stiff. A minute later, nerves still tingling, Jem and I
were on the sidewalk headed for home. We did not run away, Jessie
sent us: before the clock wound down she was in the room pushing Jem
and me out of it. “Shoo,” she said, “you all go home.” Jem
hesitated at the door. “It’s time for her medicine,” Jessie
said. As the door swung shut behind us I saw Jessie walking quickly
toward Mrs. Dubose’s bed. It was only three forty-five when we got
home, so Jem and I drop-kicked in the back yard until it was time to
meet Atticus. Atticus had two yellow pencils for me and a football
magazine for Jem, which I suppose was a silent reward for our first
day’s session with Mrs. Dubose. Jem told him what happened. “Did
she frighten you?” asked Atticus. “No sir,” said Jem, “but
she’s so nasty. She has fits or somethin‘. She spits a lot.”
“She can’t help that. When people are sick they don’t look nice
sometimes.” “She scared me,” I said. Atticus looked at me over
his glasses. “You don’t have to go with Jem, you know.” The
next afternoon at Mrs. Dubose’s was the same as the first, and so
was the next, until gradually a pattern emerged: everything would
begin normally—that is, Mrs. Dubose would hound Jem for a while on
her favorite subjects, her camellias and our father’s nigger-loving
propensities; she would grow increasingly silent, then go away 59

from
us. The alarm clock would ring, Jessie would shoo us out, and the
rest of the day was ours. “Atticus,” I said one evening, “what
exactly is a nigger-lover?” Atticus’s face was grave. “Has
somebody been calling you that?” “No sir, Mrs. Dubose calls you
that. She warms up every afternoon calling you that. Francis called
me that last Christmas, that’s where I first heard it.” “Is
that the reason you jumped on him?” asked Atticus. “Yes sir…”
“Then why are you asking me what it means?” I tried to explain to
Atticus that it wasn’t so much what Francis said that had
infuriated me as the way he had said it. “It was like he’d said
snot-nose or somethin‘.” “Scout,” said Atticus, “nigger-lover
is just one of those terms that don’t mean anything—like
snot-nose. It’s hard to explain—ignorant, trashy people use it
when they think somebody’s favoring Negroes over and above
themselves. It’s slipped into usage with some people like
ourselves, when they want a common, ugly term to label somebody.”
“You aren’t really a nigger-lover, then, are you?” “I
certainly am. I do my best to love everybody… I’m hard put,
sometimes—baby, it’s never an insult to be called what somebody
thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it
doesn’t hurt you. So don’t let Mrs. Dubose get you down. She has
enough troubles of her own.” One afternoon a month later Jem was
ploughing his way through Sir Walter Scout, as Jem called him, and
Mrs. Dubose was correcting him at every turn, when there was a knock
on the door. “Come in!” she screamed. Atticus came in. He went to
the bed and took Mrs. Dubose’s hand. “I was coming from the
office and didn’t see the children,” he said. “I thought they
might still be here.” Mrs. Dubose smiled at him. For the life of me
I could not figure out how she could bring herself to speak to him
when she seemed to hate him so. “Do you know what time it is,
Atticus?” she said. “Exactly fourteen minutes past five. The
alarm clock’s set for five-thirty. I want you to know that.” It
suddenly came to me that each day we had been staying a little longer
at Mrs. Dubose’s, that the alarm clock went off a few minutes later
every day, and that she was well into one of her fits by the time it
sounded. Today she had antagonized Jem for nearly two hours with no
intention of having a fit, and I felt hopelessly trapped. The alarm
clock was the signal for our release; if one day it did not ring,
what would we do? “I have a feeling that Jem’s reading days are
numbered,” said Atticus. “Only a week longer, I think,” she
said, “just to make sure…” Jem rose. “But—” Atticus put
out his hand and Jem was silent. On the way home, Jem said he had to
do it just for a month and the month was up and it wasn’t fair.
“Just one more week, son,” said Atticus. “No,” said Jem.
“Yes,” said Atticus. The following week found us back at Mrs.
Dubose’s. The alarm clock had ceased sounding, but Mrs. Dubose
would release us with, “That’ll do,” so late in the afternoon
Atticus would be home reading the paper when we returned. Although
her fits had passed off, she was in every other way her old self:
when Sir Walter Scott became involved in lengthy descriptions of
moats and castles, Mrs. Dubose would become bored and pick on us:
“Jeremy Finch, I told you you’d live to regret tearing up my
camellias. You regret it now, don’t you?” Jem would say he
certainly did. “Thought you could kill my Snow-on-the-Mountain, did
you? Well, Jessie says the top’s growing back out. Next time you’ll
know how to do it right, won’t you? You’ll pull it up by the
roots, won’t you?” Jem would say he certainly would. 60

“Don’t
you mutter at me, boy! You hold up your head and say yes ma’am.
Don’t guess you feel like holding it up, though, with your father
what he is.” Jem’s chin would come up, and he would gaze at Mrs.
Dubose with a face devoid of resentment. Through the weeks he had
cultivated an expression of polite and detached interest, which he
would present to her in answer to her most blood-curdling inventions.
At last the day came. When Mrs. Dubose said, “That’ll do,” one
afternoon, she added, “And that’s all. Good-day to you.” It was
over. We bounded down the sidewalk on a spree of sheer relief,
leaping and howling. That spring was a good one: the days grew longer
and gave us more playing time. Jem’s mind was occupied mostly with
the vital statistics of every college football player in the nation.
Every night Atticus would read us the sports pages of the newspapers.
Alabama might go to the Rose Bowl again this year, judging from its
prospects, not one of whose names we could pronounce. Atticus was in
the middle of Windy Seaton’s column one evening when the telephone
rang. He answered it, then went to the hat rack in the hall. “I’m
going down to Mrs. Dubose’s for a while,” he said. “I won’t
be long.” But Atticus stayed away until long past my bedtime. When
he returned he was carrying a candy box. Atticus sat down in the
livingroom and put the box on the floor beside his chair. “What’d
she want?” asked Jem. We had not seen Mrs. Dubose for over a month.
She was never on the porch any more when we passed. “She’s dead,
son,” said Atticus. “She died a few minutes ago.” “Oh,”
said Jem. “Well.” “Well is right,” said Atticus. “She’s
not suffering any more. She was sick for a long time. Son, didn’t
you know what her fits were?” Jem shook his head. “Mrs. Dubose
was a morphine addict,” said Atticus. “She took it as a
pain-killer for years. The doctor put her on it. She’d have spent
the rest of her life on it and died without so much agony, but she
was too contrary—” “Sir?” said Jem. Atticus said, “Just
before your escapade she called me to make her will. Dr. Reynolds
told her she had only a few months left. Her business affairs were in
perfect order but she said, ‘There’s still one thing out of
order.’” “What was that?” Jem was perplexed. “She said she
was going to leave this world beholden to nothing and nobody. Jem,
when you’re sick as she was, it’s all right to take anything to
make it easier, but it wasn’t all right for her. She said she meant
to break herself of it before she died, and that’s what she did.”
Jem said, “You mean that’s what her fits were?” “Yes, that’s
what they were. Most of the time you were reading to her I doubt if
she heard a word you said. Her whole mind and body were concentrated
on that alarm clock. If you hadn’t fallen into her hands, I’d
have made you go read to her anyway. It may have been some
distraction. There was another reason—” “Did she die free?”
asked Jem. “As the mountain air,” said Atticus. “She was
conscious to the last, almost. Conscious,” he smiled, “and
cantankerous. She still disapproved heartily of my doings, and said
I’d probably spend the rest of my life bailing you out of jail. She
had Jessie fix you this box—” Atticus reached down and picked up
the candy box. He handed it to Jem. Jem opened the box. Inside,
surrounded by wads of damp cotton, was a white, waxy, perfect
camellia. It was a Snow-on-the-Mountain. Jem’s eyes nearly popped
out of his head. “Old hell-devil, old hell-devil!” he screamed,
flinging it down. “Why can’t she leave me alone?” 61

In
a flash Atticus was up and standing over him. Jem buried his face in
Atticus’s shirt front. “Sh-h,” he said. “I think that was her
way of telling you—everything’s all right now, Jem, everything’s
all right. You know, she was a great lady.” “A lady?” Jem
raised his head. His face was scarlet. “After all those things she
said about you, a lady?” “She was. She had her own views about
things, a lot different from mine, maybe… son, I told you that if
you hadn’t lost your head I’d have made you go read to her. I
wanted you to see something about her—I wanted you to see what real
courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a
gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you
begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You
rarely win, but sometimes you do. Mrs. Dubose won, all ninety-eight
pounds of her. According to her views, she died beholden to nothing
and nobody. She was the bravest person I ever knew.” Jem picked up
the candy box and threw it in the fire. He picked up the camellia,
and when I went off to bed I saw him fingering the wide petals.
Atticus was reading the paper.

Part
Two

Chapter
12

Jem
was twelve. He was difficult to live with, inconsistent, moody. His
appetite was appalling, and he told me so many times to stop
pestering him I consulted Atticus: “Reckon he’s got a tapeworm?”
Atticus said no, Jem was growing. I must be patient with him and
disturb him as little as possible. This change in Jem had come about
in a matter of weeks. Mrs. Dubose was not cold in her grave—Jem had
seemed grateful enough for my company when he went to read to her.
Overnight, it seemed, Jem had acquired an alien set of values and was
trying to impose them on me: several times he went so far as to tell
me what to do. After one altercation when Jem hollered, “It’s
time you started bein‘ a girl and acting right!” I burst into
tears and fled to Calpurnia. “Don’t you fret too much over Mister
Jem—” she began. “Mister Jem?” “Yeah, he’s just about
Mister Jem now.” “He ain’t that old,” I said. “All he needs
is somebody to beat him up, and I ain’t big enough.” “Baby,”
said Calpurnia, “I just can’t help it if Mister Jem’s growin‘
up. He’s gonna want to be off to himself a lot now, doin’
whatever boys do, so you just come right on in the kitchen when you
feel lonesome. We’ll find lots of things to do in here.” The
beginning of that summer boded well: Jem could do as he pleased;
Calpurnia would do until Dill came. She seemed glad to see me when I
appeared in the kitchen, and by watching her I began to think there
was some skill involved in being a girl. But summer came and Dill was
not there. I received a letter and a snapshot from him. The letter
said he had a new father whose picture was enclosed, and he would
have to stay in Meridian because they planned to build a fishing
boat. His father was a lawyer like Atticus, only much younger. Dill’s
new father had a pleasant face, which made me glad Dill had captured
him, but I was crushed. Dill concluded by saying he would love me
forever and not to worry, he would come get me and marry me as soon
as he got enough money together, so please write. The fact that I had
a permanent fiancé was little compensation for his absence: I had
never thought about it, but summer was Dill by the fishpool smoking
string, Dill’s eyes alive with complicated plans to make Boo Radley
emerge; summer was the swiftness with which Dill would reach up and
kiss me when Jem was not looking, the longings we sometimes felt each
other feel. With him, life was routine; without him, life was
unbearable. I stayed miserable for two days. 62

As
if that were not enough, the state legislature was called into
emergency session and Atticus left us for two weeks. The Governor was
eager to scrape a few barnacles off the ship of state; there were
sit-down strikes in Birmingham; bread lines in the cities grew
longer, people in the country grew poorer. But these were events
remote from the world of Jem and me. We were surprised one morning to
see a cartoon in the Montgomery
Advertiser above
the caption, “Maycomb’s Finch.” It showed Atticus barefooted
and in short pants, chained to a desk: he was diligently writing on a
slate while some frivolous-looking girls yelled, “Yoo-hoo!” at
him. “That’s a compliment,” explained Jem. “He spends his
time doin‘ things that wouldn’t get done if nobody did ’em.”
“Huh?” In addition to Jem’s newly developed characteristics, he
had acquired a maddening air of wisdom. “Oh, Scout, it’s like
reorganizing the tax systems of the counties and things. That kind of
thing’s pretty dry to most men.” “How do you know?” “Oh, go
on and leave me alone. I’m readin‘ the paper.” Jem got his
wish. I departed for the kitchen. While she was shelling peas,
Calpurnia suddenly said, “What am I gonna do about you all’s
church this Sunday?” “Nothing, I reckon. Atticus left us
collection.” Calpurnia’s eyes narrowed and I could tell what was
going through her mind. “Cal,” I said, “you know we’ll
behave. We haven’t done anything in church in years.” Calpurnia
evidently remembered a rainy Sunday when we were both fatherless and
teacherless. Left to its own devices, the class tied Eunice Ann
Simpson to a chair and placed her in the furnace room. We forgot her,
trooped upstairs to church, and were listening quietly to the sermon
when a dreadful banging issued from the radiator pipes, persisting
until someone investigated and brought forth Eunice Ann saying she
didn’t want to play Shadrach any more—Jem Finch said she wouldn’t
get burnt if she had enough faith, but it was hot down there.
“Besides, Cal, this isn’t the first time Atticus has left us,”
I protested. “Yeah, but he makes certain your teacher’s gonna be
there. I didn’t hear him say this time—reckon he forgot it.”
Calpurnia scratched her head. Suddenly she smiled. “How’d you and
Mister Jem like to come to church with me tomorrow?” “Really?”
“How ‘bout it?” grinned Calpurnia. If Calpurnia had ever bathed
me roughly before, it was nothing compared to her supervision of that
Saturday night’s routine. She made me soap all over twice, drew
fresh water in the tub for each rinse; she stuck my head in the basin
and washed it with Octagon soap and castile. She had trusted Jem for
years, but that night she invaded his privacy and provoked an
outburst: “Can’t anybody take a bath in this house without the
whole family lookin‘?” Next morning she began earlier than usual,
to “go over our clothes.” When Calpurnia stayed overnight with us
she slept on a folding cot in the kitchen; that morning it was
covered with our Sunday habiliments. She had put so much starch in my
dress it came up like a tent when I sat down. She made me wear a
petticoat and she wrapped a pink sash tightly around my waist. She
went over my patent-leather shoes with a cold biscuit until she saw
her face in them. “It’s like we were goin‘ to Mardi Gras,”
said Jem. “What’s all this for, Cal?” “I don’t want anybody
sayin‘ I don’t look after my children,” she muttered. “Mister
Jem, you absolutely can’t wear that tie with that suit. It’s
green.” “‘Smatter with that?” “Suit’s blue. Can’t you
tell?” “Hee hee,” I howled, “Jem’s color blind.” 63

His
face flushed angrily, but Calpurnia said, “Now you all quit that.
You’re gonna go to First Purchase with smiles on your faces.”
First Purchase African M.E. Church was in the Quarters outside the
southern town limits, across the old sawmill tracks. It was an
ancient paint-peeled frame building, the only church in Maycomb with
a steeple and bell, called First Purchase because it was paid for
from the first earnings of freed slaves. Negroes worshiped in it on
Sundays and white men gambled in it on weekdays. The churchyard was
brick-hard clay, as was the cemetery beside it. If someone died
during a dry spell, the body was covered with chunks of ice until
rain softened the earth. A few graves in the cemetery were marked
with crumbling tombstones; newer ones were outlined with brightly
colored glass and broken Coca-Cola bottles. Lightning rods guarding
some graves denoted dead who rested uneasily; stumps of burned-out
candles stood at the heads of infant graves. It was a happy cemetery.
The warm bittersweet smell of clean Negro welcomed us as we entered
the churchyard—Hearts of Love hairdressing mingled with asafoetida,
snuff, Hoyt’s Cologne, Brown’s Mule, peppermint, and lilac
talcum. When they saw Jem and me with Calpurnia, the men stepped back
and took off their hats; the women crossed their arms at their
waists, weekday gestures of respectful attention. They parted and
made a small pathway to the church door for us. Calpurnia walked
between Jem and me, responding to the greetings of her brightly clad
neighbors. “What you up to, Miss Cal?” said a voice behind us.
Calpurnia’s hands went to our shoulders and we stopped and looked
around: standing in the path behind us was a tall Negro woman. Her
weight was on one leg; she rested her left elbow in the curve of her
hip, pointing at us with upturned palm. She was bullet-headed with
strange almond-shaped eyes, straight nose, and an Indian-bow mouth.
She seemed seven feet high. I felt Calpurnia’s hand dig into my
shoulder. “What you want, Lula?” she asked, in tones I had never
heard her use. She spoke quietly, contemptuously. “I wants to know
why you bringin‘ white chillun to nigger church.” “They’s my
comp’ny,” said Calpurnia. Again I thought her voice strange: she
was talking like the rest of them. “Yeah, an‘ I reckon you’s
comp’ny at the Finch house durin’ the week.” A murmur ran
through the crowd. “Don’t you fret,” Calpurnia whispered to me,
but the roses on her hat trembled indignantly. When Lula came up the
pathway toward us Calpurnia said, “Stop right there, nigger.”
Lula stopped, but she said, “You ain’t got no business bringin‘
white chillun here—they got their church, we got our’n. It is our
church, ain’t it, Miss Cal?” Calpurnia said, “It’s the same
God, ain’t it?” Jem said, “Let’s go home, Cal, they don’t
want us here—” I agreed: they did not want us here. I sensed,
rather than saw, that we were being advanced upon. They seemed to be
drawing closer to us, but when I looked up at Calpurnia there was
amusement in her eyes. When I looked down the pathway again, Lula was
gone. In her place was a solid mass of colored people. One of them
stepped from the crowd. It was Zeebo, the garbage collector. “Mister
Jem,” he said, “we’re mighty glad to have you all here. Don’t
pay no ‘tention to Lula, she’s contentious because Reverend Sykes
threatened to church her. She’s a troublemaker from way back, got
fancy ideas an’ haughty ways—we’re mighty glad to have you
all.” With that, Calpurnia led us to the church door where we were
greeted by Reverend Sykes, who led us to the front pew. First
Purchase was unceiled and unpainted within. Along its walls unlighted
kerosene lamps hung on brass brackets; pine benches served as pews.
Behind the rough oak pulpit a faded pink silk banner proclaimed God
Is Love, the church’s only decoration except a rotogravure print of
Hunt’s The
Light of the World.
There was no sign of piano, organ, hymn-books, church programs—the
familiar ecclesiastical impedimenta we saw 64

every
Sunday. It was dim inside, with a damp coolness slowly dispelled by
the gathering congregation. At each seat was a cheap cardboard fan
bearing a garish Garden of Gethsemane, courtesy Tyndal’s Hardware
Co. (You-Name-It-We-Sell-It). Calpurnia motioned Jem and me to the
end of the row and placed herself between us. She fished in her
purse, drew out her handkerchief, and untied the hard wad of change
in its corner. She gave a dime to me and a dime to Jem. “We’ve
got ours,” he whispered. “You keep it,” Calpurnia said, “you’re
my company.” Jem’s face showed brief indecision on the ethics of
withholding his own dime, but his innate courtesy won and he shifted
his dime to his pocket. I did likewise with no qualms. “Cal,” I
whispered, “where are the hymn-books?” “We don’t have any,”
she said. “Well how—?” “Sh-h,” she said. Reverend Sykes was
standing behind the pulpit staring the congregation to silence. He
was a short, stocky man in a black suit, black tie, white shirt, and
a gold watch-chain that glinted in the light from the frosted
windows. He said, “Brethren and sisters, we are particularly glad
to have company with us this morning. Mister and Miss Finch. You all
know their father. Before I begin I will read some announcements.”
Reverend Sykes shuffled some papers, chose one and held it at arm’s
length. “The Missionary Society meets in the home of Sister Annette
Reeves next Tuesday. Bring your sewing.” He read from another
paper. “You all know of Brother Tom Robinson’s trouble. He has
been a faithful member of First Purchase since he was a boy. The
collection taken up today and for the next three Sundays will go to
Helen—his wife, to help her out at home.” I punched Jem. “That’s
the Tom Atticus’s de—” “Sh-h!” I turned to Calpurnia but
was hushed before I opened my mouth. Subdued, I fixed my attention
upon Reverend Sykes, who seemed to be waiting for me to settle down.
“Will the music superintendent lead us in the first hymn,” he
said. Zeebo rose from his pew and walked down the center aisle,
stopping in front of us and facing the congregation. He was carrying
a battered hymn-book. He opened it and said, “We’ll sing number
two seventy-three.” This was too much for me. “How’re we gonna
sing it if there ain’t any hymn-books?” Calpurnia smiled. “Hush
baby,” she whispered, “you’ll see in a minute.” Zeebo cleared
his throat and read in a voice like the rumble of distant artillery:
“There’s a land beyond the river.” Miraculously on pitch, a
hundred voices sang out Zeebo’s words. The last syllable, held to a
husky hum, was followed by Zeebo saying, “That we call the sweet
forever.” Music again swelled around us; the last note lingered and
Zeebo met it with the next line: “And we only reach that shore by
faith’s decree.” The congregation hesitated, Zeebo repeated the
line carefully, and it was sung. At the chorus Zeebo closed the book,
a signal for the congregation to proceed without his help. On the
dying notes of “Jubilee,” Zeebo said, “In that far-off sweet
forever, just beyond the shining river.” Line for line, voices
followed in simple harmony until the hymn ended in a melancholy
murmur. I looked at Jem, who was looking at Zeebo from the corners of
his eyes. I didn’t believe it either, but we had both heard it.
Reverend Sykes then called on the Lord to bless the sick and the
suffering, a procedure no different from our church practice, except
Reverend Sykes directed the Deity’s attention to several specific
cases. His sermon was a forthright denunciation of sin, an austere
declaration of the motto on the wall behind him: he warned his flock
against the evils of heady brews, gambling, and strange women.
Bootleggers caused enough trouble in the Quarters, but women were 65

worse.
Again, as I had often met it in my own church, I was confronted with
the Impurity of Women doctrine that seemed to preoccupy all
clergymen. Jem and I had heard the same sermon Sunday after Sunday,
with only one exception. Reverend Sykes used his pulpit more freely
to express his views on individual lapses from grace: Jim Hardy had
been absent from church for five Sundays and he wasn’t sick;
Constance Jackson had better watch her ways—she was in grave danger
for quarreling with her neighbors; she had erected the only spite
fence in the history of the Quarters. Reverend Sykes closed his
sermon. He stood beside a table in front of the pulpit and requested
the morning offering, a proceeding that was strange to Jem and me.
One by one, the congregation came forward and dropped nickels and
dimes into a black enameled coffee can. Jem and I followed suit, and
received a soft, “Thank you, thank you,” as our dimes clinked. To
our amazement, Reverend Sykes emptied the can onto the table and
raked the coins into his hand. He straightened up and said, “This
is not enough, we must have ten dollars.” The congregation stirred.
“You all know what it’s for—Helen can’t leave those children
to work while Tom’s in jail. If everybody gives one more dime,
we’ll have it—” Reverend Sykes waved his hand and called to
someone in the back of the church. “Alec, shut the doors. Nobody
leaves here till we have ten dollars.” Calpurnia scratched in her
handbag and brought forth a battered leather coin purse. “Naw Cal,”
Jem whispered, when she handed him a shiny quarter, “we can put
ours in. Gimme your dime, Scout.” The church was becoming stuffy,
and it occurred to me that Reverend Sykes intended to sweat the
amount due out of his flock. Fans crackled, feet shuffled,
tobacco-chewers were in agony. Reverend Sykes startled me by saying
sternly, “Carlow Richardson, I haven’t seen you up this aisle
yet.” A thin man in khaki pants came up the aisle and deposited a
coin. The congregation murmured approval. Reverend Sykes then said,
“I want all of you with no children to make a sacrifice and give
one more dime apiece. Then we’ll have it.” Slowly, painfully, the
ten dollars was collected. The door was opened, and the gust of warm
air revived us. Zeebo lined On Jordan’s
Stormy Banks,
and church was over. I wanted to stay and explore, but Calpurnia
propelled me up the aisle ahead of her. At the church door, while she
paused to talk with Zeebo and his family, Jem and I chatted with
Reverend Sykes. I was bursting with questions, but decided I would
wait and let Calpurnia answer them. “We were ‘specially glad to
have you all here,” said Reverend Sykes. “This church has no
better friend than your daddy.” My curiosity burst: “Why were you
all takin‘ up collection for Tom Robinson’s wife?” “Didn’t
you hear why?” asked Reverend Sykes. “Helen’s got three
little’uns and she can’t go out to work—” “Why can’t she
take ‘em with her, Reverend?” I asked. It was customary for field
Negroes with tiny children to deposit them in whatever shade there
was while their parents worked—usually the babies sat in the shade
between two rows of cotton. Those unable to sit were strapped
papoose-style on their mothers’ backs, or resided in extra cotton
bags. Reverend Sykes hesitated. “To tell you the truth, Miss Jean
Louise, Helen’s finding it hard to get work these days… when it’s
picking time, I think Mr. Link Deas’ll take her.” “Why not,
Reverend?” Before he could answer, I felt Calpurnia’s hand on my
shoulder. At its pressure I said, “We thank you for lettin‘ us
come.” Jem echoed me, and we made our way homeward. “Cal, I know
Tom Robinson’s in jail an‘ he’s done somethin’ awful, but why
won’t folks hire Helen?” I asked. 66

Calpurnia,
in her navy voile dress and tub of a hat, walked between Jem and me.
“It’s because of what folks say Tom’s done,” she said. “Folks
aren’t anxious to—to have anything to do with any of his family.”
“Just what did he do, Cal?” Calpurnia sighed. “Old Mr. Bob
Ewell accused him of rapin‘ his girl an’ had him arrested an‘
put in jail—” “Mr. Ewell?” My memory stirred. “Does he have
anything to do with those Ewells that come every first day of school
an‘ then go home? Why, Atticus said they were absolute trash—I
never heard Atticus talk about folks the way he talked about the
Ewells. He said-” “Yeah, those are the ones.” “Well, if
everybody in Maycomb knows what kind of folks the Ewells are they’d
be glad to hire Helen… what’s rape, Cal?” “It’s somethin‘
you’ll have to ask Mr. Finch about,” she said. “He can explain
it better than I can. You all hungry? The Reverend took a long time
unwindin’ this morning, he’s not usually so tedious.” “He’s
just like our preacher,” said Jem, “but why do you all sing hymns
that way?” “Linin‘?” she asked. “Is that what it is?”
“Yeah, it’s called linin‘. They’ve done it that way as long
as I can remember.” Jem said it looked like they could save the
collection money for a year and get some hymn-books. Calpurnia
laughed. “Wouldn’t do any good,” she said. “They can’t
read.” “Can’t read?” I asked. “All those folks?” “That’s
right,” Calpurnia nodded. “Can’t but about four folks in First
Purchase read… I’m one of ‘em.” “Where’d you go to
school, Cal?” asked Jem. “Nowhere. Let’s see now, who taught me
my letters? It was Miss Maudie Atkinson’s aunt, old Miss Buford—”
“Are you that
old?”
“I’m older than Mr. Finch, even.” Calpurnia grinned. “Not
sure how much, though. We started rememberin‘ one time, trying to
figure out how old I was—I can remember back just a few years
more’n he can, so I’m not much older, when you take off the fact
that men can’t remember as well as women.” “What’s your
birthday, Cal?” “I just have it on Christmas, it’s easier to
remember that way—I don’t have a real birthday.” “But Cal,”
Jem protested, “you don’t look even near as old as Atticus.”
“Colored folks don’t show their ages so fast,” she said. “Maybe
because they can’t read. Cal, did you teach Zeebo?” “Yeah,
Mister Jem. There wasn’t a school even when he was a boy. I made
him learn, though.” Zeebo was Calpurnia’s eldest son. If I had
ever thought about it, I would have known that Calpurnia was of
mature years—Zeebo had half-grown children—but then I had never
thought about it. “Did you teach him out of a primer, like us?” I
asked. “No, I made him get a page of the Bible every day, and there
was a book Miss Buford taught me out of—bet you don’t know where
I got it,” she said. We didn’t know. Calpurnia said, “Your
Granddaddy Finch gave it to me.” “Were you from the Landing?”
Jem asked. “You never told us that.” “I certainly am, Mister
Jem. Grew up down there between the Buford Place and the Landin‘.
I’ve spent all my days workin’ for the Finches or the Bufords,
an‘ I moved to Maycomb when your daddy and your mamma married.”
“What was the book, Cal?” I asked. 67

“Blackstone’s
Commentaries.”
Jem was thunderstruck. “You mean you taught Zeebo outa that?”
“Why yes sir, Mister Jem.” Calpurnia timidly put her fingers to
her mouth. “They were the only books I had. Your grandaddy said Mr.
Blackstone wrote fine English—” “That’s why you don’t talk
like the rest of ‘em,” said Jem. “The rest of who?” “Rest
of the colored folks. Cal, but you talked like they did in church…”
That Calpurnia led a modest double life never dawned on me. The idea
that she had a separate existence outside our household was a novel
one, to say nothing of her having command of two languages. “Cal,”
I asked, “why do you talk nigger-talk to the—to your folks when
you know it’s not right?” “Well, in the first place I’m
black—” “That doesn’t mean you hafta talk that way when you
know better,” said Jem. Calpurnia tilted her hat and scratched her
head, then pressed her hat down carefully over her ears. “It’s
right hard to say,” she said. “Suppose you and Scout talked
colored-folks’ talk at home it’d be out of place, wouldn’t it?
Now what if I talked white-folks’ talk at church, and with my
neighbors? They’d think I was puttin‘ on airs to beat Moses.”
“But Cal, you know better,” I said. “It’s not necessary to
tell all you know. It’s not ladylike—in the second place, folks
don’t like to have somebody around knowin‘ more than they do. It
aggravates ’em. You’re not gonna change any of them by talkin‘
right, they’ve got to want to learn themselves, and when they don’t
want to learn there’s nothing you can do but keep your mouth shut
or talk their language.” “Cal, can I come to see you sometimes?”
She looked down at me. “See me, honey? You see me every day.”
“Out to your house,” I said. “Sometimes after work? Atticus can
get me.” “Any time you want to,” she said. “We’d be glad to
have you.” We were on the sidewalk by the Radley Place. “Look on
the porch yonder,” Jem said. I looked over to the Radley Place,
expecting to see its phantom occupant sunning himself in the swing.
The swing was empty. “I mean our porch,” said Jem. I looked down
the street. Enarmored, upright, uncompromising, Aunt Alexandra was
sitting in a rocking chair exactly as if she had sat there every day
of her life.

Chapter
13

“Put
my bag in the front bedroom, Calpurnia,” was the first thing Aunt
Alexandra said. “Jean Louise, stop scratching your head,” was the
second thing she said. Calpurnia picked up Aunty’s heavy suitcase
and opened the door. “I’ll take it,” said Jem, and took it. I
heard the suitcase hit the bedroom floor with a thump. The sound had
a dull permanence about it. “Have you come for a visit, Aunty?” I
asked. Aunt Alexandra’s visits from the Landing were rare, and she
traveled in state. She owned a bright green square Buick and a black
chauffeur, both kept in an unhealthy state of tidiness, but today
they were nowhere to be seen. “Didn’t your father tell you?”
she asked. Jem and I shook our heads. “Probably he forgot. He’s
not in yet, is he?” “Nome, he doesn’t usually get back till
late afternoon,” said Jem. “Well, your father and I decided it
was time I came to stay with you for a while.” “For a while” in
Maycomb meant anything from three days to thirty years. Jem and I
exchanged glances. “Jem’s growing up now and you are too,” she
said to me. “We decided that it would be best for you to have some
feminine influence. It won’t be many years, Jean Louise, before you
become interested in clothes and boys—” 68

I
could have made several answers to this: Cal’s a girl, it would be
many years before I would be interested in boys, I would never be
interested in clothes… but I kept quiet. “What about Uncle
Jimmy?” asked Jem. “Is he comin‘, too?” “Oh no, he’s
staying at the Landing. He’ll keep the place going.” The moment I
said, “Won’t you miss him?” I realized that this was not a
tactful question. Uncle Jimmy present or Uncle Jimmy absent made not
much difference, he never said anything. Aunt Alexandra ignored my
question. I could think of nothing else to say to her. In fact I
could never think of anything to say to her, and I sat thinking of
past painful conversations between us: How are you, Jean Louise?
Fine, thank you ma’am, how are you? Very well, thank you, what have
you been doing with yourself? Nothin‘. Don’t you do anything?
Nome. Certainly you have friends? Yessum. Well what do you all do?
Nothin’. It was plain that Aunty thought me dull in the extreme,
because I once heard her tell Atticus that I was sluggish. There was
a story behind all this, but I had no desire to extract it from her
then. Today was Sunday, and Aunt Alexandra was positively irritable
on the Lord’s Day. I guess it was her Sunday corset. She was not
fat, but solid, and she chose protective garments that drew up her
bosom to giddy heights, pinched in her waist, flared out her rear,
and managed to suggest that Aunt Alexandra’s was once an hour-glass
figure. From any angle, it was formidable. The remainder of the
afternoon went by in the gentle gloom that descends when relatives
appear, but was dispelled when we heard a car turn in the driveway.
It was Atticus, home from Montgomery. Jem, forgetting his dignity,
ran with me to meet him. Jem seized his briefcase and bag, I jumped
into his arms, felt his vague dry kiss and said, “‘d you bring me
a book? ’d you know Aunty’s here?” Atticus answered both
questions in the affirmative. “How’d you like for her to come
live with us?” I said I would like it very much, which was a lie,
but one must lie under certain circumstances and at all times when
one can’t do anything about them. “We felt it was time you
children needed—well, it’s like this, Scout,” Atticus said.
“Your aunt’s doing me a favor as well as you all. I can’t stay
here all day with you, and the summer’s going to be a hot one.”
“Yes sir,” I said, not understanding a word he said. I had an
idea, however, that Aunt Alexandra’s appearance on the scene was
not so much Atticus’s doing as hers. Aunty had a way of declaring
What Is Best For The Family, and I suppose her coming to live with us
was in that category. Maycomb welcomed her. Miss Maudie Atkinson
baked a Lane cake so loaded with shinny it made me tight; Miss
Stephanie Crawford had long visits with Aunt Alexandra, consisting
mostly of Miss Stephanie shaking her head and saying, “Uh, uh, uh.”
Miss Rachel next door had Aunty over for coffee in the afternoons,
and Mr. Nathan Radley went so far as to come up in the front yard and
say he was glad to see her. When she settled in with us and life
resumed its daily pace, Aunt Alexandra seemed as if she had always
lived with us. Her Missionary Society refreshments added to her
reputation as a hostess (she did not permit Calpurnia to make the
delicacies required to sustain the Society through long reports on
Rice Christians); she joined and became Secretary of the Maycomb
Amanuensis Club. To all parties present and participating in the life
of the county, Aunt Alexandra was one of the last of her kind: she
had river-boat, boarding-school manners; let any moral come along and
she would uphold it; she was born in the objective case; she was an
incurable gossip. When Aunt Alexandra went to school, self-doubt
could not be found in any textbook, so she knew not its meaning. She
was never bored, and given the slightest chance she would exercise
her royal prerogative: she would arrange, advise, caution, and warn.
She never let a chance escape her to point out the shortcomings of
other tribal groups to the greater glory of our own, a habit that
amused Jem rather than annoyed him: “Aunty better watch how she
talks—scratch most folks in Maycomb and they’re kin to 69

us.”
Aunt Alexandra, in underlining the moral of young Sam Merriweather’s
suicide, said it was caused by a morbid streak in the family. Let a
sixteen-year-old girl giggle in the choir and Aunty would say, “It
just goes to show you, all the Penfield women are flighty.”
Everybody in Maycomb, it seemed, had a Streak: a Drinking Streak, a
Gambling Streak, a Mean Streak, a Funny Streak. Once, when Aunty
assured us that Miss Stephanie Crawford’s tendency to mind other
people’s business was hereditary, Atticus said, “Sister, when you
stop to think about it, our generation’s practically the first in
the Finch family not to marry its cousins. Would you say the Finches
have an Incestuous Streak?” Aunty said no, that’s where we got
our small hands and feet. I never understood her preoccupation with
heredity. Somewhere, I had received the impression that Fine Folks
were people who did the best they could with the sense they had, but
Aunt Alexandra was of the opinion, obliquely expressed, that the
longer a family had been squatting on one patch of land the finer it
was. “That makes the Ewells fine folks, then,” said Jem. The
tribe of which Burris Ewell and his brethren consisted had lived on
the same plot of earth behind the Maycomb dump, and had thrived on
county welfare money for three generations. Aunt Alexandra’s theory
had something behind it, though. Maycomb was an ancient town. It was
twenty miles east of Finch’s Landing, awkwardly inland for such an
old town. But Maycomb would have been closer to the river had it not
been for the nimble-wittedness of one Sinkfield, who in the dawn of
history operated an inn where two pig-trails met, the only tavern in
the territory. Sinkfield, no patriot, served and supplied ammunition
to Indians and settlers alike, neither knowing or caring whether he
was a part of the Alabama Territory or the Creek Nation so long as
business was good. Business was excellent when Governor William Wyatt
Bibb, with a view to promoting the newly created county’s domestic
tranquility, dispatched a team of surveyors to locate its exact
center and there establish its seat of government. The surveyors,
Sinkfield’s guests, told their host that he was in the territorial
confines of Maycomb County, and showed him the probable spot where
the county seat would be built. Had not Sinkfield made a bold stroke
to preserve his holdings, Maycomb would have sat in the middle of
Winston Swamp, a place totally devoid of interest. Instead, Maycomb
grew and sprawled out from its hub, Sinkfield’s Tavern, because
Sinkfield reduced his guests to myopic drunkenness one evening,
induced them to bring forward their maps and charts, lop off a little
here, add a bit there, and adjust the center of the county to meet
his requirements. He sent them packing next day armed with their
charts and five quarts of shinny in their saddlebags—two apiece and
one for the Governor. Because its primary reason for existence was
government, Maycomb was spared the grubbiness that distinguished most
Alabama towns its size. In the beginning its buildings were solid,
its courthouse proud, its streets graciously wide. Maycomb’s
proportion of professional people ran high: one went there to have
his teeth pulled, his wagon fixed, his heart listened to, his money
deposited, his soul saved, his mules vetted. But the ultimate wisdom
of Sinkfield’s maneuver is open to question. He placed the young
town too far away from the only kind of public transportation in
those days—river-boat—and it took a man from the north end of the
county two days to travel to Maycomb for store-bought goods. As a
result the town remained the same size for a hundred years, an island
in a patchwork sea of cottonfields and timberland. Although Maycomb
was ignored during the War Between the States, Reconstruction rule
and economic ruin forced the town to grow. It grew inward. New people
so rarely settled there, the same families married the same families
until the members of the community looked faintly alike. Occasionally
someone would return from Montgomery or Mobile with an outsider, but
the result caused only a ripple in the quiet stream of family
resemblance. Things were more or less the same during my early years.
There was indeed a caste system in Maycomb, but to my mind it worked
this way: the older citizens, the present generation of people who
had lived side by side for years and 70

years,
were utterly predictable to one another: they took for granted
attitudes, character shadings, even gestures, as having been repeated
in each generation and refined by time. Thus the dicta No Crawford
Minds His Own Business, Every Third Merriweather Is Morbid, The Truth
Is Not in the Delafields, All the Bufords Walk Like That, were simply
guides to daily living: never take a check from a Delafield without a
discreet call to the bank; Miss Maudie Atkinson’s shoulder stoops
because she was a Buford; if Mrs. Grace Merriweather sips gin out of
Lydia E. Pinkham bottles it’s nothing unusual—her mother did the
same. Aunt Alexandra fitted into the world of Maycomb like a hand
into a glove, but never into the world of Jem and me. I so often
wondered how she could be Atticus’s and Uncle Jack’s sister that
I revived half-remembered tales of changelings and mandrake roots
that Jem had spun long ago. These were abstract speculations for the
first month of her stay, as she had little to say to Jem or me, and
we saw her only at mealtimes and at night before we went to bed. It
was summer and we were outdoors. Of course some afternoons when I
would run inside for a drink of water, I would find the livingroom
overrun with Maycomb ladies, sipping, whispering, fanning, and I
would be called: “Jean Louise, come speak to these ladies.” When
I appeared in the doorway, Aunty would look as if she regretted her
request; I was usually mud-splashed or covered with sand. “Speak to
your Cousin Lily,” she said one afternoon, when she had trapped me
in the hall. “Who?” I said. “Your Cousin Lily Brooke,” said
Aunt Alexandra. “She our cousin? I didn’t know that.” Aunt
Alexandra managed to smile in a way that conveyed a gentle apology to
Cousin Lily and firm disapproval to me. When Cousin Lily Brooke left
I knew I was in for it. It was a sad thing that my father had
neglected to tell me about the Finch Family, or to install any pride
into his children. She summoned Jem, who sat warily on the sofa
beside me. She left the room and returned with a purple-covered book
on which Meditations of Joshua
S. St. Clair was
stamped in gold. “Your cousin wrote this,” said Aunt Alexandra.
“He was a beautiful character.” Jem examined the small volume.
“Is this the Cousin Joshua who was locked up for so long?” Aunt
Alexandra said, “How did you know that?” “Why, Atticus said he
went round the bend at the University. Said he tried to shoot the
president. Said Cousin Joshua said he wasn’t anything but a
sewer-inspector and tried to shoot him with an old flintlock pistol,
only it just blew up in his hand. Atticus said it cost the family
five hundred dollars to get him out of that one—” Aunt Alexandra
was standing stiff as a stork. “That’s all,” she said. “We’ll
see about this.” Before bedtime I was in Jem’s room trying to
borrow a book, when Atticus knocked and entered. He sat on the side
of Jem’s bed, looked at us soberly, then he grinned. “Er—h’rm,”
he said. He was beginning to preface some things he said with a
throaty noise, and I thought he must at last be getting old, but he
looked the same. ”I don’t exactly know how to say this,“ he
began. “Well, just say it,” said Jem. “Have we done something?”
Our father was actually fidgeting. “No, I just want to explain to
you that—your Aunt Alexandra asked me… son, you know you’re a
Finch, don’t you?” “That’s what I’ve been told.” Jem
looked out of the corners of his eyes. His voice rose uncontrollably,
“Atticus, what’s the matter?” Atticus crossed his knees and
folded his arms. “I’m trying to tell you the facts of life.”
Jem’s disgust deepened. “I know all that stuff,” he said.
Atticus suddenly grew serious. In his lawyer’s voice, without a
shade of inflection, he said: “Your aunt has asked me to try and
impress upon you and Jean Louise that you 71

are
not from run-of-the-mill people, that you are the product of several
generations’ gentle breeding—” Atticus paused, watching me
locate an elusive redbug on my leg. “Gentle breeding,” he
continued, when I had found and scratched it, “and that you should
try to live up to your name—” Atticus persevered in spite of us:
“She asked me to tell you you must try to behave like the little
lady and gentleman that you are. She wants to talk to you about the
family and what it’s meant to Maycomb County through the years, so
you’ll have some idea of who you are, so you might be moved to
behave accordingly,” he concluded at a gallop. Stunned, Jem and I
looked at each other, then at Atticus, whose collar seemed to worry
him. We did not speak to him. Presently I picked up a comb from Jem’s
dresser and ran its teeth along the edge. “Stop that noise,”
Atticus said. His curtness stung me. The comb was midway in its
journey, and I banged it down. For no reason I felt myself beginning
to cry, but I could not stop. This was not my father. My father never
thought these thoughts. My father never spoke so. Aunt Alexandra had
put him up to this, somehow. Through my tears I saw Jem standing in a
similar pool of isolation, his head cocked to one side. There was
nowhere to go, but I turned to go and met Atticus’s vest front. I
buried my head in it and listened to the small internal noises that
went on behind the light blue cloth: his watch ticking, the faint
crackle of his starched shirt, the soft sound of his breathing. “Your
stomach’s growling,” I said. “I know it,” he said. “You
better take some soda.” “I will,” he said. “Atticus, is all
this behavin‘ an’ stuff gonna make things different? I mean are
you—?” I felt his hand on the back of my head. “Don’t you
worry about anything,” he said. “It’s not time to worry.”
When I heard that, I knew he had come back to us. The blood in my
legs began to flow again, and I raised my head. “You really want us
to do all that? I can’t remember everything Finches are supposed to
do…” “I don’t want you to remember it. Forget it.” He went
to the door and out of the room, shutting the door behind him. He
nearly slammed it, but caught himself at the last minute and closed
it softly. As Jem and I stared, the door opened again and Atticus
peered around. His eyebrows were raised, his glasses had slipped.
“Get more like Cousin Joshua every day, don’t I? Do you think
I’ll end up costing the family five hundred dollars?” I know now
what he was trying to do, but Atticus was only a man. It takes a
woman to do that kind of work.

Chapter
14

Although
we heard no more about the Finch family from Aunt Alexandra, we heard
plenty from the town. On Saturdays, armed with our nickels, when Jem
permitted me to accompany him (he was now positively allergic to my
presence when in public), we would squirm our way through sweating
sidewalk crowds and sometimes hear, “There’s his chillun,” or,
“Yonder’s some Finches.” Turning to face our accusers, we would
see only a couple of farmers studying the enema bags in the Mayco
Drugstore window. Or two dumpy countrywomen in straw hats sitting in
a Hoover cart. “They c’n go loose and rape up the countryside for
all of ‘em who run this county care,” was one obscure observation
we met head on from a skinny gentleman when he passed us. Which
reminded me that I had a question to ask Atticus. “What’s rape?”
I asked him that night. Atticus looked around from behind his paper.
He was in his chair by the window. As we grew older, Jem and I
thought it generous to allow Atticus thirty minutes to himself after
supper. 72

He
sighed, and said rape was carnal knowledge of a female by force and
without consent. “Well if that’s all it is why did Calpurnia dry
me up when I asked her what it was?” Atticus looked pensive.
“What’s that again?” “Well, I asked Calpurnia comin‘ from
church that day what it was and she said ask you but I forgot to and
now I’m askin’ you.” His paper was now in his lap. “Again,
please,” he said. I told him in detail about our trip to church
with Calpurnia. Atticus seemed to enjoy it, but Aunt Alexandra, who
was sitting in a corner quietly sewing, put down her embroidery and
stared at us. “You all were coming back from Calpurnia’s church
that Sunday?” Jem said, “Yessum, she took us.” I remembered
something. “Yessum, and she promised me I could come out to her
house some afternoon. Atticus. I’ll go next Sunday if it’s all
right, can I? Cal said she’d come get me if you were off in the
car.” “You may not.”
Aunt Alexandra said it. I wheeled around, startled, then turned back
to Atticus in time to catch his swift glance at her, but it was too
late. I said, “I didn’t ask you!” For a big man, Atticus could
get up and down from a chair faster than anyone I ever knew. He was
on his feet. “Apologize to your aunt,” he said. “I didn’t ask
her, I asked you—” Atticus turned his head and pinned me to the
wall with his good eye. His voice was deadly: “First, apologize to
your aunt.” “I’m sorry, Aunty,” I muttered. “Now then,”
he said. “Let’s get this clear: you do as Calpurnia tells you,
you do as I tell you, and as long as your aunt’s in this house, you
will do as she tells you. Understand?” I understood, pondered a
while, and concluded that the only way I could retire with a shred of
dignity was to go to the bathroom, where I stayed long enough to make
them think I had to go. Returning, I lingered in the hall to hear a
fierce discussion going on in the livingroom. Through the door I
could see Jem on the sofa with a football magazine in front of his
face, his head turning as if its pages contained a live tennis match.
“…you’ve got to do something about her,” Aunty was saying.
“You’ve let things go on too long, Atticus, too long.” “I
don’t see any harm in letting her go out there. Cal’d look after
her there as well as she does here.” Who was the “her” they
were talking about? My heart sank: me. I felt the starched walls of a
pink cotton penitentiary closing in on me, and for the second time in
my life I thought of running away. Immediately. “Atticus, it’s
all right to be soft-hearted, you’re an easy man, but you have a
daughter to think of. A daughter who’s growing up.” “That’s
what I am thinking of.” “And don’t try to get around it. You’ve
got to face it sooner or later and it might as well be tonight. We
don’t need her now.” Atticus’s voice was even: “Alexandra,
Calpurnia’s not leaving this house until she wants to. You may
think otherwise, but I couldn’t have got along without her all
these years. She’s a faithful member of this family and you’ll
simply have to accept things the way they are. Besides, sister, I
don’t want you working your head off for us—you’ve no reason to
do that. We still need Cal as much as we ever did.” “But
Atticus—” “Besides, I don’t think the children’ve suffered
one bit from her having brought them up. If anything, she’s been
harder on them in some ways than a mother would have been… she’s
never let them get away with anything, she’s never indulged them
the way most colored nurses do. She tried to bring them up according
to her lights, and Cal’s lights are pretty good—and another
thing, the children love her.” I breathed again. It wasn’t me, it
was only Calpurnia they were talking about. Revived, 73

I
entered the livingroom. Atticus had retreated behind his newspaper
and Aunt Alexandra was worrying her embroidery. Punk, punk, punk, her
needle broke the taut circle. She stopped, and pulled the cloth
tighter: punk-punk-punk. She was furious. Jem got up and padded
across the rug. He motioned me to follow. He led me to his room and
closed the door. His face was grave. “They’ve been fussing,
Scout.” Jem and I fussed a great deal these days, but I had never
heard of or seen anyone quarrel with Atticus. It was not a
comfortable sight. “Scout, try not to antagonize Aunty, hear?”
Atticus’s remarks were still rankling, which made me miss the
request in Jem’s question. My feathers rose again. “You tryin‘
to tell me what to do?” “Naw, it’s—he’s got a lot on his
mind now, without us worrying him.” “Like what?” Atticus didn’t
appear to have anything especially on his mind. “It’s this Tom
Robinson case that’s worryin‘ him to death—” I said Atticus
didn’t worry about anything. Besides, the case never bothered us
except about once a week and then it didn’t last. “That’s
because you can’t hold something in your mind but a little while,”
said Jem. “It’s different with grown folks, we—” His
maddening superiority was unbearable these days. He didn’t want to
do anything but read and go off by himself. Still, everything he read
he passed along to me, but with this difference: formerly, because he
thought I’d like it; now, for my edification and instruction. “Jee
crawling hova, Jem! Who do you think you are?” “Now I mean it,
Scout, you antagonize Aunty and I’ll—I’ll spank you.” With
that, I was gone. “You damn morphodite, I’ll kill you!” He was
sitting on the bed, and it was easy to grab his front hair and land
one on his mouth. He slapped me and I tried another left, but a punch
in the stomach sent me sprawling on the floor. It nearly knocked the
breath out of me, but it didn’t matter because I knew he was
fighting, he was fighting me back. We were still equals. “Ain’t
so high and mighty now, are you!” I screamed, sailing in again. He
was still on the bed and I couldn’t get a firm stance, so I threw
myself at him as hard as I could, hitting, pulling, pinching,
gouging. What had begun as a fist-fight became a brawl. We were still
struggling when Atticus separated us. “That’s all,” he said.
“Both of you go to bed right now.” “Taah!” I said at Jem. He
was being sent to bed at my bedtime. “Who started it?” asked
Atticus, in resignation. “Jem did. He was tryin‘ to tell me what
to do. I don’t have to mind him
now,
do I?” Atticus smiled. “Let’s leave it at this: you mind Jem
whenever he can make you. Fair enough?” Aunt Alexandra was present
but silent, and when she went down the hall with Atticus we heard her
say, “…just one of the things I’ve been telling you about,” a
phrase that united us again. Ours were adjoining rooms; as I shut the
door between them Jem said, “Night, Scout.” “Night,” I
murmured, picking my way across the room to turn on the light. As I
passed the bed I stepped on something warm, resilient, and rather
smooth. It was not quite like hard rubber, and I had the sensation
that it was alive. I also heard it move. I switched on the light and
looked at the floor by the bed. Whatever I had stepped on was gone. I
tapped on Jem’s door. “What,” he said. “How does a snake
feel?” “Sort of rough. Cold. Dusty. Why?” “I think there’s
one under my bed. Can you come look?” “Are you bein‘ funny?”
Jem opened the door. He was in his pajama bottoms. I noticed not
without satisfaction that the mark of my knuckles was still on his
mouth. When he saw I meant what I said, he said, “If you think I’m
gonna put my face down to a snake 74

you’ve
got another think comin’. Hold on a minute.” He went to the
kitchen and fetched the broom. “You better get up on the bed,” he
said. “You reckon it’s really one?” I asked. This was an
occasion. Our houses had no cellars; they were built on stone blocks
a few feet above the ground, and the entry of reptiles was not
unknown but was not commonplace. Miss Rachel Haverford’s excuse for
a glass of neat whiskey every morning was that she never got over the
fright of finding a rattler coiled in her bedroom closet, on her
washing, when she went to hang up her negligee. Jem made a tentative
swipe under the bed. I looked over the foot to see if a snake would
come out. None did. Jem made a deeper swipe. “Do snakes grunt?”
“It ain’t a snake,” Jem said. “It’s somebody.” Suddenly a
filthy brown package shot from under the bed. Jem raised the broom
and missed Dill’s head by an inch when it appeared. “God
Almighty.” Jem’s voice was reverent. We watched Dill emerge by
degrees. He was a tight fit. He stood up and eased his shoulders,
turned his feet in their ankle sockets, rubbed the back of his neck.
His circulation restored, he said, “Hey.” Jem petitioned God
again. I was speechless. “I’m ‘bout to perish,” said Dill.
“Got anything to eat?” In a dream, I went to the kitchen. I
brought him back some milk and half a pan of corn bread left over
from supper. Dill devoured it, chewing with his front teeth, as was
his custom. I finally found my voice. “How’d you get here?” By
an involved route. Refreshed by food, Dill recited this narrative:
having been bound in chains and left to die in the basement (there
were basements in Meridian) by his new father, who disliked him, and
secretly kept alive on raw field peas by a passing farmer who heard
his cries for help (the good man poked a bushel pod by pod through
the ventilator), Dill worked himself free by pulling the chains from
the wall. Still in wrist manacles, he wandered two miles out of
Meridian where he discovered a small animal show and was immediately
engaged to wash the camel. He traveled with the show all over
Mississippi until his infallible sense of direction told him he was
in Abbott County, Alabama, just across the river from Maycomb. He
walked the rest of the way. “How’d you get here?” asked Jem. He
had taken thirteen dollars from his mother’s purse, caught the nine
o’clock from Meridian and got off at Maycomb Junction. He had
walked ten or eleven of the fourteen miles to Maycomb, off the
highway in the scrub bushes lest the authorities be seeking him, and
had ridden the remainder of the way clinging to the backboard of a
cotton wagon. He had been under the bed for two hours, he thought; he
had heard us in the diningroom, and the clink of forks on plates
nearly drove him crazy. He thought Jem and I would never go to bed;
he had considered emerging and helping me beat Jem, as Jem had grown
far taller, but he knew Mr. Finch would break it up soon, so he
thought it best to stay where he was. He was worn out, dirty beyond
belief, and home. “They must not know you’re here,” said Jem.
“We’d know if they were lookin‘ for you…” “Think they’re
still searchin‘ all the picture shows in Meridian.” Dill grinned.
“You oughta let your mother know where you are,” said Jem. “You
oughta let her know you’re here…” Dill’s eyes flickered at
Jem, and Jem looked at the floor. Then he rose and broke the
remaining code of our childhood. He went out of the room and down the
hall. “Atticus,” his voice was distant, “can you come here a
minute, sir?” Beneath its sweat-streaked dirt Dill’s face went
white. I felt sick. Atticus was in the doorway. He came to the middle
of the room and stood with his hands in his pockets, looking down at
Dill. 75

I
finally found my voice: “It’s okay, Dill. When he wants you to
know somethin‘, he tells you.” Dill looked at me. “I mean it’s
all right,” I said. “You know he wouldn’t bother you, you know
you ain’t scared of Atticus.” “I’m not scared…” Dill
muttered. “Just hungry, I’ll bet.” Atticus’s voice had its
usual pleasant dryness. “Scout, we can do better than a pan of cold
corn bread, can’t we? You fill this fellow up and when I get back
we’ll see what we can see.” “Mr. Finch, don’t tell Aunt
Rachel, don’t make me go back, please
sir!
I’ll run off again—!” “Whoa, son,” said Atticus. “Nobody’s
about to make you go anywhere but to bed pretty soon. I’m just
going over to tell Miss Rachel you’re here and ask her if you could
spend the night with us—you’d like that, wouldn’t you? And for
goodness’ sake put some of the county back where it belongs, the
soil erosion’s bad enough as it is.” Dill stared at my father’s
retreating figure. “He’s tryin‘ to be funny,” I said. “He
means take a bath. See there, I told you he wouldn’t bother you.”
Jem was standing in a corner of the room, looking like the traitor he
was. “Dill, I had to tell him,” he said. “You can’t run three
hundred miles off without your mother knowin‘.” We left him
without a word. Dill ate, and ate, and ate. He hadn’t eaten since
last night. He used all his money for a ticket, boarded the train as
he had done many times, coolly chatted with the conductor, to whom
Dill was a familiar sight, but he had not the nerve to invoke the
rule on small children traveling a distance alone if you’ve lost
your money the conductor will lend you enough for dinner and your
father will pay him back at the end of the line. Dill made his way
through the leftovers and was reaching for a can of pork and beans in
the pantry when Miss Rachel’s Do-oo Je-sus went off in the hall. He
shivered like a rabbit. He bore with fortitude her Wait Till I Get
You Home, Your Folks Are Out of Their Minds Worryin‘, was quite
calm during That’s All the Harris in You Coming Out, smiled at her
Reckon You Can Stay One Night, and returned the hug at long last
bestowed upon him. Atticus pushed up his glasses and rubbed his face.
“Your father’s tired,” said Aunt Alexandra, her first words in
hours, it seemed. She had been there, but I suppose struck dumb most
of the time. “You children get to bed now.” We left them in the
diningroom, Atticus still mopping his face. “From rape to riot to
runaways,” we heard him chuckle. “I wonder what the next two
hours will bring.” Since things appeared to have worked out pretty
well, Dill and I decided to be civil to Jem. Besides, Dill had to
sleep with him so we might as well speak to him. I put on my pajamas,
read for a while and found myself suddenly unable to keep my eyes
open. Dill and Jem were quiet; when I turned off my reading lamp
there was no strip of light under the door to Jem’s room. I must
have slept a long time, for when I was punched awake the room was dim
with the light of the setting moon. “Move over, Scout.” “He
thought he had to,” I mumbled. “Don’t stay mad with him.”
Dill got in bed beside me. “I ain’t,” he said. “I just wanted
to sleep with you. Are you waked up?” By this time I was, but
lazily so. “Why’d you do it?” No answer. “I said why’d you
run off? Was he really hateful like you said?” “Naw…” “Didn’t
you all build that boat like you wrote you were gonna?” “He just
said we would. We never did.” I raised up on my elbow, facing
Dill’s outline. “It’s no reason to run off. They don’t get
around to doin‘ what they say they’re gonna do half the time…”
“That wasn’t it, he—they just wasn’t interested in me.” 76

This
was the weirdest reason for flight I had ever heard. “How come?”
“Well, they stayed gone all the time, and when they were home,
even, they’d get off in a room by themselves.” “What’d they
do in there?” “Nothin‘, just sittin’ and readin‘—but they
didn’t want me with ’em.” I pushed the pillow to the headboard
and sat up. “You know something? I was fixin‘ to run off tonight
because there they all were. You don’t want ’em around you all
the time, Dill—” Dill breathed his patient breath, a half-sigh.
“—good night, Atticus’s gone all day and sometimes half the
night and off in the legislature and I don’t know what—you don’t
want ‘em around all the time, Dill, you couldn’t do anything if
they were.” “That’s not it.” As Dill explained, I found
myself wondering what life would be if Jem were different, even from
what he was now; what I would do if Atticus did not feel the
necessity of my presence, help and advice. Why, he couldn’t get
along a day without me. Even Calpurnia couldn’t get along unless I
was there. They needed me. “Dill, you ain’t telling me right—your
folks couldn’t do without you. They must be just mean to you. Tell
you what to do about that—” Dill’s voice went on steadily in
the darkness: “The thing is, what I’m tryin‘ to say is—they
do get on a lot better without me, I can’t help them any. They
ain’t mean. They buy me everything I want, but it’s
now—you’ve-got-it-go-play-with-it. You’ve got a roomful of
things. I-got-you-that-book-so-go-read-it.” Dill tried to deepen
his voice. “You’re not a boy. Boys get out and play baseball with
other boys, they don’t hang around the house worryin’ their
folks.” Dill’s voice was his own again: “Oh, they ain’t mean.
They kiss you and hug you good night and good mornin‘ and good-bye
and tell you they love you—Scout, let’s get us a baby.”
“Where?” There was a man Dill had heard of who had a boat that he
rowed across to a foggy island where all these babies were; you could
order one— “That’s a lie. Aunty said God drops ‘em down the
chimney. At least that’s what I think she said.” For once,
Aunty’s diction had not been too clear. “Well that ain’t so.
You get babies from each other. But there’s this man, too—he has
all these babies just waitin‘ to wake up, he breathes life into
’em…” Dill was off again. Beautiful things floated around in
his dreamy head. He could read two books to my one, but he preferred
the magic of his own inventions. He could add and subtract faster
than lightning, but he preferred his own twilight world, a world
where babies slept, waiting to be gathered like morning lilies. He
was slowly talking himself to sleep and taking me with him, but in
the quietness of his foggy island there rose the faded image of a
gray house with sad brown doors. “Dill?” “Mm?” “Why do you
reckon Boo Radley’s never run off?” Dill sighed a long sigh and
turned away from me. “Maybe he doesn’t have anywhere to run off
to…”

Chapter
15

After
many telephone calls, much pleading on behalf of the defendant, and a
long forgiving letter from his mother, it was decided that Dill could
stay. We had a week of peace together. After that, little, it seemed.
A nightmare was upon us. It began one evening after supper. Dill was
over; Aunt Alexandra was in her chair in the corner, Atticus was in
his; Jem and I were on the floor reading. It had been a placid week:
I had minded Aunty; Jem had outgrown the treehouse, but helped Dill
and me 77

construct
a new rope ladder for it; Dill had hit upon a foolproof plan to make
Boo Radley come out at no cost to ourselves (place a trail of lemon
drops from the back door to the front yard and he’d follow it, like
an ant). There was a knock on the front door, Jem answered it and
said it was Mr. Heck Tate. “Well, ask him to come in,” said
Atticus. “I already did. There’s some men outside in the yard,
they want you to come out.” In Maycomb, grown men stood outside in
the front yard for only two reasons: death and politics. I wondered
who had died. Jem and I went to the front door, but Atticus called,
“Go back in the house.” Jem turned out the livingroom lights and
pressed his nose to a window screen. Aunt Alexandra protested. “Just
for a second, Aunty, let’s see who it is,” he said. Dill and I
took another window. A crowd of men was standing around Atticus. They
all seemed to be talking at once. “…movin‘ him to the county
jail tomorrow,” Mr. Tate was saying, “I don’t look for any
trouble, but I can’t guarantee there won’t be any…” “Don’t
be foolish, Heck,” Atticus said. “This is Maycomb.” “…said
I was just uneasy.” “Heck, we’ve gotten one postponement of
this case just to make sure there’s nothing to be uneasy about.
This is Saturday,” Atticus said. “Trial’ll probably be Monday.
You can keep him one night, can’t you? I don’t think anybody in
Maycomb’ll begrudge me a client, with times this hard.” There was
a murmur of glee that died suddenly when Mr. Link Deas said, “Nobody
around here’s up to anything, it’s that Old Sarum bunch I’m
worried about… can’t you get a—what is it, Heck?” “Change
of venue,” said Mr. Tate. “Not much point in that, now is it?”
Atticus said something inaudible. I turned to Jem, who waved me to
silence. “—besides,” Atticus was saying, “you’re not scared
of that crowd, are you?” “…know how they do when they get
shinnied up.” “They don’t usually drink on Sunday, they go to
church most of the day…” Atticus said. “This is a special
occasion, though…” someone said. They murmured and buzzed until
Aunty said if Jem didn’t turn on the livingroom lights he would
disgrace the family. Jem didn’t hear her. “—don’t see why you
touched it in the first place,” Mr. Link Deas was saying. “You’ve
got everything to lose from this, Atticus. I mean everything.” “Do
you really think so?” This was Atticus’s dangerous question. “Do
you really think you want to move there, Scout?” Bam, bam, bam, and
the checkerboard was swept clean of my men. “Do you really think
that, son? Then read this.” Jem would struggle the rest of an
evening through the speeches of Henry W. Grady. “Link, that boy
might go to the chair, but he’s not going till the truth’s told.”
Atticus’s voice was even. “And you know what the truth is.”
There was a murmur among the group of men, made more ominous when
Atticus moved back to the bottom front step and the men drew nearer
to him. Suddenly Jem screamed, “Atticus, the telephone’s
ringing!” The men jumped a little and scattered; they were people
we saw every day: merchants, in-town farmers; Dr. Reynolds was there;
so was Mr. Avery. “Well, answer it, son,” called Atticus.
Laughter broke them up. When Atticus switched on the overhead light
in the livingroom he found Jem at the window, pale except for the
vivid mark of the screen on his nose. “Why on earth are you all
sitting in the dark?” he asked. Jem watched him go to his chair and
pick up the evening paper. I sometimes think Atticus subjected every
crisis of his life to tranquil evaluation behind The Mobile Register,
The
Birmingham News and
The
Montgomery Advertiser.
“They were after you, weren’t they?” Jem went to him. “They
wanted to get you, didn’t 78

they?”
Atticus lowered the paper and gazed at Jem. “What have you been
reading?” he asked. Then he said gently, “No son, those were our
friends.” “It wasn’t a—a gang?” Jem was looking from the
corners of his eyes. Atticus tried to stifle a smile but didn’t
make it. “No, we don’t have mobs and that nonsense in Maycomb.
I’ve never heard of a gang in Maycomb.” “Ku Klux got after some
Catholics one time.” “Never heard of any Catholics in Maycomb
either,” said Atticus, “you’re confusing that with something
else. Way back about nineteen-twenty there was a Klan, but it was a
political organization more than anything. Besides, they couldn’t
find anybody to scare. They paraded by Mr. Sam Levy’s house one
night, but Sam just stood on his porch and told ‘em things had come
to a pretty pass, he’d sold ’em the very sheets on their backs.
Sam made ‘em so ashamed of themselves they went away.” The Levy
family met all criteria for being Fine Folks: they did the best they
could with the sense they had, and they had been living on the same
plot of ground in Maycomb for five generations. “The Ku Klux’s
gone,” said Atticus. “It’ll never come back.” I walked home
with Dill and returned in time to overhear Atticus saying to Aunty,
“…in favor of Southern womanhood as much as anybody, but not for
preserving polite fiction at the expense of human life,” a
pronouncement that made me suspect they had been fussing again. I
sought Jem and found him in his room, on the bed deep in thought.
“Have they been at it?” I asked. “Sort of. She won’t let him
alone about Tom Robinson. She almost said Atticus was disgracin‘
the family. Scout… I’m scared.” “Scared’a what?” “Scared
about Atticus. Somebody might hurt him.” Jem preferred to remain
mysterious; all he would say to my questions was go on and leave him
alone. Next day was Sunday. In the interval between Sunday School and
Church when the congregation stretched its legs, I saw Atticus
standing in the yard with another knot of men. Mr. Heck Tate was
present, and I wondered if he had seen the light. He never went to
church. Even Mr. Underwood was there. Mr. Underwood had no use for
any organization but The
Maycomb Tribune,
of which he was the sole owner, editor, and printer. His days were
spent at his linotype, where he refreshed himself occasionally from
an ever-present gallon jug of cherry wine. He rarely gathered news;
people brought it to him. It was said that he made up every edition
of The
Maycomb Tribune out
of his own head and wrote it down on the linotype. This was
believable. Something must have been up to haul Mr. Underwood out. I
caught Atticus coming in the door, and he said that they’d moved
Tom Robinson to the Maycomb jail. He also said, more to himself than
to me, that if they’d kept him there in the first place there
wouldn’t have been any fuss. I watched him take his seat on the
third row from the front, and I heard him rumble, “Nearer my God to
thee,” some notes behind the rest of us. He never sat with Aunty,
Jem and me. He liked to be by himself in church. The fake peace that
prevailed on Sundays was made more irritating by Aunt Alexandra’s
presence. Atticus would flee to his office directly after dinner,
where if we sometimes looked in on him, we would find him sitting
back in his swivel chair reading. Aunt Alexandra composed herself for
a two-hour nap and dared us to make any noise in the yard, the
neighborhood was resting. Jem in his old age had taken to his room
with a stack of football magazines. So Dill and I spent our Sundays
creeping around in Deer’s Pasture. Shooting on Sundays was
prohibited, so Dill and I kicked Jem’s football around the pasture
for a while, which was no fun. Dill asked if I’d like to have a
poke at Boo Radley. I said I didn’t think it’d be nice to bother
him, and spent the rest of the afternoon filling Dill in on last
winter’s events. He was considerably impressed. 79

We
parted at suppertime, and after our meal Jem and I were settling down
to a routine evening, when Atticus did something that interested us:
he came into the livingroom carrying a long electrical extension
cord. There was a light bulb on the end. “I’m going out for a
while,” he said. “You folks’ll be in bed when I come back, so
I’ll say good night now.” With that, he put his hat on and went
out the back door. “He’s takin‘ the car,” said Jem. Our
father had a few peculiarities: one was, he never ate desserts;
another was that he liked to walk. As far back as I could remember,
there was always a Chevrolet in excellent condition in the carhouse,
and Atticus put many miles on it in business trips, but in Maycomb he
walked to and from his office four times a day, covering about two
miles. He said his only exercise was walking. In Maycomb, if one went
for a walk with no definite purpose in mind, it was correct to
believe one’s mind incapable of definite purpose. Later on, I bade
my aunt and brother good night and was well into a book when I heard
Jem rattling around in his room. His go-to-bed noises were so
familiar to me that I knocked on his door: “Why ain’t you going
to bed?” “I’m goin‘ downtown for a while.” He was changing
his pants. “Why? It’s almost ten o’clock, Jem.” He knew it,
but he was going anyway. “Then I’m goin‘ with you. If you say
no you’re not, I’m goin’ anyway, hear?” Jem saw that he would
have to fight me to keep me home, and I suppose he thought a fight
would antagonize Aunty, so he gave in with little grace. I dressed
quickly. We waited until Aunty’s light went out, and we walked
quietly down the back steps. There was no moon tonight. “Dill’ll
wanta come,” I whispered. “So he will,” said Jem gloomily. We
leaped over the driveway wall, cut through Miss Rachel’s side yard
and went to Dill’s window. Jem whistled bob-white. Dill’s face
appeared at the screen, disappeared, and five minutes later he
unhooked the screen and crawled out. An old campaigner, he did not
speak until we were on the sidewalk. “What’s up?” “Jem’s
got the look-arounds,” an affliction Calpurnia said all boys caught
at his age. “I’ve just got this feeling,” Jem said, “just
this feeling.” We went by Mrs. Dubose’s house, standing empty and
shuttered, her camellias grown up in weeds and johnson grass. There
were eight more houses to the post office corner. The south side of
the square was deserted. Giant monkey-puzzle bushes bristled on each
corner, and between them an iron hitching rail glistened under the
street lights. A light shone in the county toilet, otherwise that
side of the courthouse was dark. A larger square of stores surrounded
the courthouse square; dim lights burned from deep within them.
Atticus’s office was in the courthouse when he began his law
practice, but after several years of it he moved to quieter quarters
in the Maycomb Bank building. When we rounded the corner of the
square, we saw the car parked in front of the bank. “He’s in
there,” said Jem. But he wasn’t. His office was reached by a long
hallway. Looking down the hall, we should have seen Atticus
Finch, Attorney-at-Law in
small sober letters against the light from behind his door. It was
dark. Jem peered in the bank door to make sure. He turned the knob.
The door was locked. “Let’s go up the street. Maybe he’s
visitin‘ Mr. Underwood.” Mr. Underwood not only ran The
Maycomb Tribune office,
he lived in it. That is, above it. He covered the courthouse and
jailhouse news simply by looking out his upstairs window. The office
building was on the northwest corner of the square, and to reach it
we had to pass the jail. The Maycomb jail was the most venerable and
hideous of the county’s buildings. Atticus said it was like
something Cousin Joshua St. Clair might have designed. It was 80

certainly
someone’s dream. Starkly out of place in a town of square-faced
stores and steep-roofed houses, the Maycomb jail was a miniature
Gothic joke one cell wide and two cells high, complete with tiny
battlements and flying buttresses. Its fantasy was heightened by its
red brick facade and the thick steel bars at its ecclesiastical
windows. It stood on no lonely hill, but was wedged between Tyndal’s
Hardware Store and The
Maycomb Tribune office.
The jail was Maycomb’s only conversation piece: its detractors said
it looked like a Victorian privy; its supporters said it gave the
town a good solid respectable look, and no stranger would ever
suspect that it was full of niggers. As we walked up the sidewalk, we
saw a solitary light burning in the distance. “That’s funny,”
said Jem, “jail doesn’t have an outside light.” “Looks like
it’s over the door,” said Dill. A long extension cord ran between
the bars of a second-floor window and down the side of the building.
In the light from its bare bulb, Atticus was sitting propped against
the front door. He was sitting in one of his office chairs, and he
was reading, oblivious of the nightbugs dancing over his head. I made
to run, but Jem caught me. “Don’t go to him,” he said, “he
might not like it. He’s all right, let’s go home. I just wanted
to see where he was.” We were taking a short cut across the square
when four dusty cars came in from the Meridian highway, moving slowly
in a line. They went around the square, passed the bank building, and
stopped in front of the jail. Nobody got out. We saw Atticus look up
from his newspaper. He closed it, folded it deliberately, dropped it
in his lap, and pushed his hat to the back of his head. He seemed to
be expecting them. “Come on,” whispered Jem. We streaked across
the square, across the street, until we were in the shelter of the
Jitney Jungle door. Jem peeked up the sidewalk. “We can get
closer,” he said. We ran to Tyndal’s Hardware door—near enough,
at the same time discreet. In ones and twos, men got out of the cars.
Shadows became substance as lights revealed solid shapes moving
toward the jail door. Atticus remained where he was. The men hid him
from view. “He in there, Mr. Finch?” a man said. “He is,” we
heard Atticus answer, “and he’s asleep. Don’t wake him up.”
In obedience to my father, there followed what I later realized was a
sickeningly comic aspect of an unfunny situation: the men talked in
near-whispers. “You know what we want,” another man said. “Get
aside from the door, Mr. Finch.” “You can turn around and go home
again, Walter,” Atticus said pleasantly. “Heck Tate’s around
somewhere.” “The hell he is,” said another man. “Heck’s
bunch’s so deep in the woods they won’t get out till mornin‘.”
“Indeed? Why so?” “Called ‘em off on a snipe hunt,” was the
succinct answer. “Didn’t you think a’that, Mr. Finch?”
“Thought about it, but didn’t believe it. Well then,” my
father’s voice was still the same, “that changes things, doesn’t
it?” “It do,” another deep voice said. Its owner was a shadow.
“Do you really think so?” This was the second time I heard
Atticus ask that question in two days, and it meant somebody’s man
would get jumped. This was too good to miss. I broke away from Jem
and ran as fast as I could to Atticus. Jem shrieked and tried to
catch me, but I had a lead on him and Dill. I pushed my way through
dark smelly bodies and burst into the circle of light. “H-ey,
Atticus!” I thought he would have a fine surprise, but his face
killed my joy. A flash of plain fear was going out of his eyes, but
returned when Dill and Jem wriggled into the light. There was a smell
of stale whiskey and pigpen about, and when I glanced around I 81

discovered
that these men were strangers. They were not the people I saw last
night. Hot embarrassment shot through me: I had leaped triumphantly
into a ring of people I had never seen before. Atticus got up from
his chair, but he was moving slowly, like an old man. He put the
newspaper down very carefully, adjusting its creases with lingering
fingers. They were trembling a little. “Go home, Jem,” he said.
“Take Scout and Dill home.” We were accustomed to prompt, if not
always cheerful acquiescence to Atticus’s instructions, but from
the way he stood Jem was not thinking of budging. “Go home, I
said.” Jem shook his head. As Atticus’s fists went to his hips,
so did Jem’s, and as they faced each other I could see little
resemblance between them: Jem’s soft brown hair and eyes, his oval
face and snug-fitting ears were our mother’s, contrasting oddly
with Atticus’s graying black hair and square-cut features, but they
were somehow alike. Mutual defiance made them alike. “Son, I said
go home.” Jem shook his head. “I’ll send him home,” a burly
man said, and grabbed Jem roughly by the collar. He yanked Jem nearly
off his feet. “Don’t you touch him!” I kicked the man swiftly.
Barefooted, I was surprised to see him fall back in real pain. I
intended to kick his shin, but aimed too high. “That’ll do,
Scout.” Atticus put his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t kick folks.
No—” he said, as I was pleading justification. “Ain’t nobody
gonna do Jem that way,” I said. “All right, Mr. Finch, get ‘em
outa here,” someone growled. “You got fifteen seconds to get ’em
outa here.” In the midst of this strange assembly, Atticus stood
trying to make Jem mind him. “I ain’t going,” was his steady
answer to Atticus’s threats, requests, and finally, “Please Jem,
take them home.” I was getting a bit tired of that, but felt Jem
had his own reasons for doing as he did, in view of his prospects
once Atticus did get him home. I looked around the crowd. It was a
summer’s night, but the men were dressed, most of them, in overalls
and denim shirts buttoned up to the collars. I thought they must be
cold-natured, as their sleeves were unrolled and buttoned at the
cuffs. Some wore hats pulled firmly down over their ears. They were
sullen-looking, sleepy-eyed men who seemed unused to late hours. I
sought once more for a familiar face, and at the center of the
semi-circle I found one. “Hey, Mr. Cunningham.” The man did not
hear me, it seemed. “Hey, Mr. Cunningham. How’s your entailment
gettin‘ along?” Mr. Walter Cunningham’s legal affairs were well
known to me; Atticus had once described them at length. The big man
blinked and hooked his thumbs in his overall straps. He seemed
uncomfortable; he cleared his throat and looked away. My friendly
overture had fallen flat. Mr. Cunningham wore no hat, and the top
half of his forehead was white in contrast to his sunscorched face,
which led me to believe that he wore one most days. He shifted his
feet, clad in heavy work shoes. “Don’t you remember me, Mr.
Cunningham? I’m Jean Louise Finch. You brought us some hickory nuts
one time, remember?” I began to sense the futility one feels when
unacknowledged by a chance acquaintance. “I go to school with
Walter,” I began again. “He’s your boy, ain’t he? Ain’t he,
sir?” Mr. Cunningham was moved to a faint nod. He did know me,
after all. “He’s in my grade,” I said, “and he does right
well. He’s a good boy,” I added, “a real nice boy. We brought
him home for dinner one time. Maybe he told you about me, I beat him
up one time but he was real nice about it. Tell him hey for me, won’t
you?” Atticus had said it was the polite thing to talk to people
about what they were 82

interested
in, not about what you were interested in. Mr. Cunningham displayed
no interest in his son, so I tackled his entailment once more in a
last-ditch effort to make him feel at home. “Entailments are bad,”
I was advising him, when I slowly awoke to the fact that I was
addressing the entire aggregation. The men were all looking at me,
some had their mouths half-open. Atticus had stopped poking at Jem:
they were standing together beside Dill. Their attention amounted to
fascination. Atticus’s mouth, even, was half-open, an attitude he
had once described as uncouth. Our eyes met and he shut it. “Well,
Atticus, I was just sayin‘ to Mr. Cunningham that entailments are
bad an’ all that, but you said not to worry, it takes a long time
sometimes… that you all’d ride it out together…” I was slowly
drying up, wondering what idiocy I had committed. Entailments seemed
all right enough for livingroom talk. I began to feel sweat gathering
at the edges of my hair; I could stand anything but a bunch of people
looking at me. They were quite still. “What’s the matter?” I
asked. Atticus said nothing. I looked around and up at Mr.
Cunningham, whose face was equally impassive. Then he did a peculiar
thing. He squatted down and took me by both shoulders. “I’ll tell
him you said hey, little lady,” he said. Then he straightened up
and waved a big paw. “Let’s clear out,” he called. “Let’s
get going, boys.” As they had come, in ones and twos the men
shuffled back to their ramshackle cars. Doors slammed, engines
coughed, and they were gone. I turned to Atticus, but Atticus had
gone to the jail and was leaning against it with his face to the
wall. I went to him and pulled his sleeve. “Can we go home now?”
He nodded, produced his handkerchief, gave his face a going-over and
blew his nose violently. “Mr. Finch?” A soft husky voice came
from the darkness above: “They gone?” Atticus stepped back and
looked up. “They’ve gone,” he said. “Get some sleep, Tom.
They won’t bother you any more.” From a different direction,
another voice cut crisply through the night: “You’re damn tootin‘
they won’t. Had you covered all the time, Atticus.” Mr. Underwood
and a double-barreled shotgun were leaning out his window above The
Maycomb Tribune office.
It was long past my bedtime and I was growing quite tired; it seemed
that Atticus and Mr. Underwood would talk for the rest of the night,
Mr. Underwood out the window and Atticus up at him. Finally Atticus
returned, switched off the light above the jail door, and picked up
his chair. “Can I carry it for you, Mr. Finch?” asked Dill. He
had not said a word the whole time. “Why, thank you, son.”
Walking toward the office, Dill and I fell into step behind Atticus
and Jem. Dill was encumbered by the chair, and his pace was slower.
Atticus and Jem were well ahead of us, and I assumed that Atticus was
giving him hell for not going home, but I was wrong. As they passed
under a streetlight, Atticus reached out and massaged Jem’s hair,
his one gesture of affection.

Chapter
16

Jem
heard me. He thrust his head around the connecting door. As he came
to my bed Atticus’s light flashed on. We stayed where we were until
it went off; we heard him turn over, and we waited until he was still
again. Jem took me to his room and put me in bed beside him. “Try
to go to sleep,” he said, “It’ll be all over after tomorrow,
maybe.” We had come in quietly, so as not to wake Aunty. Atticus
killed the engine in the 83

driveway
and coasted to the carhouse; we went in the back door and to our
rooms without a word. I was very tired, and was drifting into sleep
when the memory of Atticus calmly folding his newspaper and pushing
back his hat became Atticus standing in the middle of an empty
waiting street, pushing up his glasses. The full meaning of the
night’s events hit me and I began crying. Jem was awfully nice
about it: for once he didn’t remind me that people nearly nine
years old didn’t do things like that. Everybody’s appetite was
delicate this morning, except Jem’s: he ate his way through three
eggs. Atticus watched in frank admiration; Aunt Alexandra sipped
coffee and radiated waves of disapproval. Children who slipped out at
night were a disgrace to the family. Atticus said he was right glad
his disgraces had come along, but Aunty said, “Nonsense, Mr.
Underwood was there all the time.” “You know, it’s a funny
thing about Braxton,” said Atticus. “He despises Negroes, won’t
have one near him.” Local opinion held Mr. Underwood to be an
intense, profane little man, whose father in a fey fit of humor
christened Braxton Bragg, a name Mr. Underwood had done his best to
live down. Atticus said naming people after Confederate generals made
slow steady drinkers. Calpurnia was serving Aunt Alexandra more
coffee, and she shook her head at what I thought was a pleading
winning look. “You’re still too little,” she said. “I’ll
tell you when you ain’t.” I said it might help my stomach. “All
right,” she said, and got a cup from the sideboard. She poured one
tablespoonful of coffee into it and filled the cup to the brim with
milk. I thanked her by sticking out my tongue at it, and looked up to
catch Aunty’s warning frown. But she was frowning at Atticus. She
waited until Calpurnia was in the kitchen, then she said, “Don’t
talk like that in front of them.” “Talk like what in front of
whom?” he asked. “Like that in front of Calpurnia. You said
Braxton Underwood despises Negroes right in front of her.” “Well,
I’m sure Cal knows it. Everybody in Maycomb knows it.” I was
beginning to notice a subtle change in my father these days, that
came out when he talked with Aunt Alexandra. It was a quiet digging
in, never outright irritation. There was a faint starchiness in his
voice when he said, “Anything fit to say at the table’s fit to
say in front of Calpurnia. She knows what she means to this family.”
“I don’t think it’s a good habit, Atticus. It encourages them.
You know how they talk among themselves. Every thing that happens in
this town’s out to the Quarters before sundown.” My father put
down his knife. “I don’t know of any law that says they can’t
talk. Maybe if we didn’t give them so much to talk about they’d
be quiet. Why don’t you drink your coffee, Scout?” I was playing
in it with the spoon. “I thought Mr. Cunningham was a friend of
ours. You told me a long time ago he was.” “He still is.” “But
last night he wanted to hurt you.” Atticus placed his fork beside
his knife and pushed his plate aside. “Mr. Cunningham’s basically
a good man,” he said, “he just has his blind spots along with the
rest of us.” Jem spoke. “Don’t call that a blind spot. He’da
killed you last night when he first went there.” “He might have
hurt me a little,” Atticus conceded, “but son, you’ll
understand folks a little better when you’re older. A mob’s
always made up of people, no matter what. Mr. Cunningham was part of
a mob last night, but he was still a man. Every mob in every little
Southern town is always made up of people you know—doesn’t say
much for them, does it?” “I’ll say not,” said Jem. “So it
took an eight-year-old child to bring ‘em to their senses, didn’t
it?” said Atticus. “That proves something—that a gang of wild
animals can be stopped, simply because 84

they’re
still human. Hmp, maybe we need a police force of children… you
children last night made Walter Cunningham stand in my shoes for a
minute. That was enough.” Well, I hoped Jem would understand folks
a little better when he was older; I wouldn’t. “First day Walter
comes back to school’ll be his last,” I affirmed. “You will not
touch him,” Atticus said flatly. “I don’t want either of you
bearing a grudge about this thing, no matter what happens.” “You
see, don’t you,” said Aunt Alexandra, “what comes of things
like this. Don’t say I haven’t told you.” Atticus said he’d
never say that, pushed out his chair and got up. “There’s a day
ahead, so excuse me. Jem, I don’t want you and Scout downtown
today, please.” As Atticus departed, Dill came bounding down the
hall into the diningroom. “It’s all over town this morning,” he
announced, “all about how we held off a hundred folks with our bare
hands…” Aunt Alexandra stared him to silence. “It was not a
hundred folks,” she said, “and nobody held anybody off. It was
just a nest of those Cunninghams, drunk and disorderly.” “Aw,
Aunty, that’s just Dill’s way,” said Jem. He signaled us to
follow him. “You all stay in the yard today,” she said, as we
made our way to the front porch. It was like Saturday. People from
the south end of the county passed our house in a leisurely but
steady stream. Mr. Dolphus Raymond lurched by on his thoroughbred.
“Don’t see how he stays in the saddle,” murmured Jem. “How
c’n you stand to get drunk ‘fore eight in the morning?” A
wagonload of ladies rattled past us. They wore cotton sunbonnets and
dresses with long sleeves. A bearded man in a wool hat drove them.
“Yonder’s some Mennonites,” Jem said to Dill. “They don’t
have buttons.” They lived deep in the woods, did most of their
trading across the river, and rarely came to Maycomb. Dill was
interested. “They’ve all got blue eyes,” Jem explained, “and
the men can’t shave after they marry. Their wives like for ‘em to
tickle ’em with their beards.” Mr. X Billups rode by on a mule
and waved to us. “He’s a funny man,” said Jem. “X’s his
name, not his initial. He was in court one time and they asked him
his name. He said X Billups. Clerk asked him to spell it and he said
X. Asked him again and he said X. They kept at it till he wrote X on
a sheet of paper and held it up for everybody to see. They asked him
where he got his name and he said that’s the way his folks signed
him up when he was born.” As the county went by us, Jem gave Dill
the histories and general attitudes of the more prominent figures:
Mr. Tensaw Jones voted the straight Prohibition ticket; Miss Emily
Davis dipped snuff in private; Mr. Byron Waller could play the
violin; Mr. Jake Slade was cutting his third set of teeth. A
wagonload of unusually stern-faced citizens appeared. When they
pointed to Miss Maudie Atkinson’s yard, ablaze with summer flowers,
Miss Maudie herself came out on the porch. There was an odd thing
about Miss Maudie—on her porch she was too far away for us to see
her features clearly, but we could always catch her mood by the way
she stood. She was now standing arms akimbo, her shoulders drooping a
little, her head cocked to one side, her glasses winking in the
sunlight. We knew she wore a grin of the uttermost wickedness. The
driver of the wagon slowed down his mules, and a shrill-voiced woman
called out: “He that cometh in vanity departeth in darkness!”
Miss Maudie answered: “A merry heart maketh a cheerful
countenance!” I guess that the foot-washers thought that the Devil
was quoting Scripture for his own purposes, as the driver speeded his
mules. Why they objected to Miss Maudie’s yard was a mystery,
heightened in my mind because for someone who spent all the daylight
hours outdoors, Miss Maudie’s command of Scripture was formidable.
“You goin‘ to court this morning?” asked Jem. We had strolled
over. “I am not,” she said. “I have no business with the court
this morning.” “Aren’t you goin‘ down to watch?” asked
Dill. “I am not. ‘t’s morbid, watching a poor devil on trial
for his life. Look at all those folks, 85

it’s
like a Roman carnival.” “They hafta try him in public, Miss
Maudie,” I said. “Wouldn’t be right if they didn’t.” “I’m
quite aware of that,” she said. “Just because it’s public, I
don’t have to go, do I?” Miss Stephanie Crawford came by. She
wore a hat and gloves. “Um, um, um,” she said. “Look at all
those folks—you’d think William Jennings Bryan was speakin‘.”
“And where are you going, Stephanie?” inquired Miss Maudie. “To
the Jitney Jungle.” Miss Maudie said she’d never seen Miss
Stephanie go to the Jitney Jungle in a hat in her life. “Well,”
said Miss Stephanie, “I thought I might just look in at the
courthouse, to see what Atticus’s up to.” “Better be careful he
doesn’t hand you a subpoena.” We asked Miss Maudie to elucidate:
she said Miss Stephanie seemed to know so much about the case she
might as well be called on to testify. We held off until noon, when
Atticus came home to dinner and said they’d spent the morning
picking the jury. After dinner, we stopped by for Dill and went to
town. It was a gala occasion. There was no room at the public
hitching rail for another animal, mules and wagons were parked under
every available tree. The courthouse square was covered with picnic
parties sitting on newspapers, washing down biscuit and syrup with
warm milk from fruit jars. Some people were gnawing on cold chicken
and cold fried pork chops. The more affluent chased their food with
drugstore Coca-Cola in bulb-shaped soda glasses. Greasy-faced
children popped-the-whip through the crowd, and babies lunched at
their mothers’ breasts. In a far corner of the square, the Negroes
sat quietly in the sun, dining on sardines, crackers, and the more
vivid flavors of Nehi Cola. Mr. Dolphus Raymond sat with them. “Jem,”
said Dill, “he’s drinkin‘ out of a sack.” Mr. Dolphus Raymond
seemed to be so doing: two yellow drugstore straws ran from his mouth
to the depths of a brown paper bag. “Ain’t ever seen anybody do
that,” murmured Dill. “How does he keep what’s in it in it?”
Jem giggled. “He’s got a Co-Cola bottle full of whiskey in there.
That’s so’s not to upset the ladies. You’ll see him sip it all
afternoon, he’ll step out for a while and fill it back up.”
“Why’s he sittin‘ with the colored folks?” “Always does. He
likes ‘em better’n he likes us, I reckon. Lives by himself way
down near the county line. He’s got a colored woman and all sorts
of mixed chillun. Show you some of ’em if we see ‘em.” “He
doesn’t look like trash,” said Dill. “He’s not, he owns all
one side of the riverbank down there, and he’s from a real old
family to boot.” “Then why does he do like that?” “That’s
just his way,” said Jem. “They say he never got over his weddin‘.
He was supposed to marry one of the—the Spencer ladies, I think.
They were gonna have a huge weddin’, but they didn’t—after the
rehearsal the bride went upstairs and blew her head off. Shotgun. She
pulled the trigger with her toes.” “Did they ever know why?”
“No,” said Jem, “nobody ever knew quite why but Mr. Dolphus.
They said it was because she found out about his colored woman, he
reckoned he could keep her and get married too. He’s been sorta
drunk ever since. You know, though, he’s real good to those
chillun—” “Jem,” I asked, “what’s a mixed child?” “Half
white, half colored. You’ve seen ‘em, Scout. You know that
red-kinky-headed one that delivers for the drugstore. He’s half
white. They’re real sad.” “Sad, how come?” “They don’t
belong anywhere. Colored folks won’t have ‘em because they’re
half 86

white;
white folks won’t have ’em cause they’re colored, so they’re
just in-betweens, don’t belong anywhere. But Mr. Dolphus, now, they
say he’s shipped two of his up north. They don’t mind ‘em up
north. Yonder’s one of ’em.” A small boy clutching a Negro
woman’s hand walked toward us. He looked all Negro to me: he was
rich chocolate with flaring nostrils and beautiful teeth. Sometimes
he would skip happily, and the Negro woman tugged his hand to make
him stop. Jem waited until they passed us. “That’s one of the
little ones,” he said. “How can you tell?” asked Dill. “He
looked black to me.” “You can’t sometimes, not unless you know
who they are. But he’s half Raymond, all right.” “But how can
you tell?”
I asked. “I told you, Scout, you just hafta know who they are.”
“Well how do you know we ain’t Negroes?” “Uncle Jack Finch
says we really don’t know. He says as far as he can trace back the
Finches we ain’t, but for all he knows we mighta come straight out
of Ethiopia durin‘ the Old Testament.” “Well if we came out
durin‘ the Old Testament it’s too long ago to matter.” “That’s
what I thought,” said Jem, “but around here once you have a drop
of Negro blood, that makes you all black. Hey, look—” Some
invisible signal had made the lunchers on the square rise and scatter
bits of newspaper, cellophane, and wrapping paper. Children came to
mothers, babies were cradled on hips as men in sweat-stained hats
collected their families and herded them through the courthouse
doors. In the far corner of the square the Negroes and Mr. Dolphus
Raymond stood up and dusted their breeches. There were few women and
children among them, which seemed to dispel the holiday mood. They
waited patiently at the doors behind the white families. “Let’s
go in,” said Dill. “Naw, we better wait till they get in, Atticus
might not like it if he sees us,” said Jem. The Maycomb County
courthouse was faintly reminiscent of Arlington in one respect: the
concrete pillars supporting its south roof were too heavy for their
light burden. The pillars were all that remained standing when the
original courthouse burned in 1856. Another courthouse was built
around them. It is better to say, built in spite of them. But for the
south porch, the Maycomb County courthouse was early Victorian,
presenting an unoffensive vista when seen from the north. From the
other side, however, Greek revival columns clashed with a big
nineteenth-century clock tower housing a rusty unreliable instrument,
a view indicating a people determined to preserve every physical
scrap of the past. To reach the courtroom, on the second floor, one
passed sundry sunless county cubbyholes: the tax assessor, the tax
collector, the county clerk, the county solicitor, the circuit clerk,
the judge of probate lived in cool dim hutches that smelled of
decaying record books mingled with old damp cement and stale urine.
It was necessary to turn on the lights in the daytime; there was
always a film of dust on the rough floorboards. The inhabitants of
these offices were creatures of their environment: little gray-faced
men, they seemed untouched by wind or sun. We knew there was a crowd,
but we had not bargained for the multitudes in the first-floor
hallway. I got separated from Jem and Dill, but made my way toward
the wall by the stairwell, knowing Jem would come for me eventually.
I found myself in the middle of the Idlers’ Club and made myself as
unobtrusive as possible. This was a group of white-shirted,
khaki-trousered, suspendered old men who had spent their lives doing
nothing and passed their twilight days doing same on pine benches
under the live oaks on the square. Attentive critics of courthouse
business, Atticus said they knew as much law as the Chief Justice,
from long years of observation. Normally, they were the court’s
only spectators, and today they seemed resentful of the interruption
of their comfortable routine. When they spoke, their voices sounded
casually important. The conversation was about my father. 87

“…thinks
he knows what he’s doing,” one said. “Oh-h now, I wouldn’t
say that,” said another. “Atticus Finch’s a deep reader, a
mighty deep reader.” “He reads all right, that’s all he does.”
The club snickered. “Lemme tell you somethin‘ now, Billy,” a
third said, “you know the court appointed him to defend this
nigger.” “Yeah, but Atticus aims to defend him. That’s what I
don’t like about it.” This was news, news that put a different
light on things: Atticus had to, whether he wanted to or not. I
thought it odd that he hadn’t said anything to us about it—we
could have used it many times in defending him and ourselves. He had
to, that’s why he was doing it, equaled fewer fights and less
fussing. But did that explain the town’s attitude? The court
appointed Atticus to defend him. Atticus aimed to defend him. That’s
what they didn’t like about it. It was confusing. The Negroes,
having waited for the white people to go upstairs, began to come in.
“Whoa now, just a minute,” said a club member, holding up his
walking stick. “Just don’t start up them there stairs yet
awhile.” The club began its stiff-jointed climb and ran into Dill
and Jem on their way down looking for me. They squeezed past and Jem
called, “Scout, come on, there ain’t a seat left. We’ll hafta
stand up.” “Looka there, now.” he said irritably, as the black
people surged upstairs. The old men ahead of them would take most of
the standing room. We were out of luck and it was my fault, Jem
informed me. We stood miserably by the wall. “Can’t you all get
in?” Reverend Sykes was looking down at us, black hat in hand.
“Hey, Reverend,” said Jem. “Naw, Scout here messed us up.”
“Well, let’s see what we can do.” Reverend Sykes edged his way
upstairs. In a few moments he was back. “There’s not a seat
downstairs. Do you all reckon it’ll be all right if you all came to
the balcony with me?” “Gosh yes,” said Jem. Happily, we sped
ahead of Reverend Sykes to the courtroom floor. There, we went up a
covered staircase and waited at the door. Reverend Sykes came puffing
behind us, and steered us gently through the black people in the
balcony. Four Negroes rose and gave us their front-row seats. The
Colored balcony ran along three walls of the courtroom like a
second-story veranda, and from it we could see everything. The jury
sat to the left, under long windows. Sunburned, lanky, they seemed to
be all farmers, but this was natural: townfolk rarely sat on juries,
they were either struck or excused. One or two of the jury looked
vaguely like dressed-up Cunninghams. At this stage they sat straight
and alert. The circuit solicitor and another man, Atticus and Tom
Robinson sat at tables with their backs to us. There was a brown book
and some yellow tablets on the solicitor’s table; Atticus’s was
bare. Just inside the railing that divided the spectators from the
court, the witnesses sat on cowhide-bottomed chairs. Their backs were
to us. Judge Taylor was on the bench, looking like a sleepy old
shark, his pilot fish writing rapidly below in front of him. Judge
Taylor looked like most judges I had ever seen: amiable,
white-haired, slightly ruddy-faced, he was a man who ran his court
with an alarming informality—he sometimes propped his feet up, he
often cleaned his fingernails with his pocket knife. In long equity
hearings, especially after dinner, he gave the impression of dozing,
an impression dispelled forever when a lawyer once deliberately
pushed a pile of books to the floor in a desperate effort to wake him
up. Without opening his eyes, Judge Taylor murmured, “Mr. Whitley,
do that again and it’ll cost you one hundred dollars.” He was a
man learned in the law, and although he seemed to take his job
casually, in reality he kept a firm grip on any proceedings that came
before him. Only once was Judge Taylor ever seen at a dead standstill
in open court, and the Cunninghams 88

stopped
him. Old Sarum, their stamping grounds, was populated by two families
separate and apart in the beginning, but unfortunately bearing the
same name. The Cunninghams married the Coninghams until the spelling
of the names was academic—academic until a Cunningham disputed a
Coningham over land titles and took to the law. During a controversy
of this character, Jeems Cunningham testified that his mother spelled
it Cunningham on deeds and things, but she was really a Coningham,
she was an uncertain speller, a seldom reader, and was given to
looking far away sometimes when she sat on the front gallery in the
evening. After nine hours of listening to the eccentricities of Old
Sarum’s inhabitants, Judge Taylor threw the case out of court. When
asked upon what grounds, Judge Taylor said, “Champertous
connivance,” and declared he hoped to God the litigants were
satisfied by each having had their public say. They were. That was
all they had wanted in the first place. Judge Taylor had one
interesting habit. He permitted smoking in his courtroom but did not
himself indulge: sometimes, if one was lucky, one had the privilege
of watching him put a long dry cigar into his mouth and munch it
slowly up. Bit by bit the dead cigar would disappear, to reappear
some hours later as a flat slick mess, its essence extracted and
mingling with Judge Taylor’s digestive juices. I once asked Atticus
how Mrs. Taylor stood to kiss him, but Atticus said they didn’t
kiss much. The witness stand was to the right of Judge Taylor, and
when we got to our seats Mr. Heck Tate was already on it.

Chapter
17

“Jem,”
I said, “are those the Ewells sittin‘ down yonder?” “Hush,”
said Jem, “Mr. Heck Tate’s testifyin‘.” Mr. Tate had dressed
for the occasion. He wore an ordinary business suit, which made him
look somehow like every other man: gone were his high boots, lumber
jacket, and bullet-studded belt. From that moment he ceased to
terrify me. He was sitting forward in the witness chair, his hands
clasped between his knees, listening attentively to the circuit
solicitor. The solicitor, a Mr. Gilmer, was not well known to us. He
was from Abbottsville; we saw him only when court convened, and that
rarely, for court was of no special interest to Jem and me. A
balding, smooth-faced man, he could have been anywhere between forty
and sixty. Although his back was to us, we knew he had a slight cast
in one of his eyes which he used to his advantage: he seemed to be
looking at a person when he was actually doing nothing of the kind,
thus he was hell on juries and witnesses. The jury, thinking
themselves under close scrutiny, paid attention; so did the
witnesses, thinking likewise. “…in your own words, Mr. Tate,”
Mr. Gilmer was saying. “Well,” said Mr. Tate, touching his
glasses and speaking to his knees, “I was called—” “Could you
say it to the jury, Mr. Tate? Thank you. Who called you?” Mr. Tate
said, “I was fetched by Bob—by Mr. Bob Ewell yonder, one night—”
“What night, sir?” Mr. Tate said, “It was the night of November
twenty-first. I was just leaving my office to go home when B—Mr.
Ewell came in, very excited he was, and said get out to his house
quick, some nigger’d raped his girl.” “Did you go?”
“Certainly. Got in the car and went out as fast as I could.” “And
what did you find?” “Found her lying on the floor in the middle
of the front room, one on the right as you go in. She was pretty well
beat up, but I heaved her to her feet and she washed her face in a
bucket in the corner and said she was all right. I asked her who hurt
her and she said it was Tom Robinson—” Judge Taylor, who had been
concentrating on his fingernails, looked up as if he were expecting
an objection, but Atticus was quiet. 89

“—asked
her if he beat her like that, she said yes he had. Asked her if he
took advantage of her and she said yes he did. So I went down to
Robinson’s house and brought him back. She identified him as the
one, so I took him in. That’s all there was to it.” “Thank
you,” said Mr. Gilmer. Judge Taylor said, “Any questions,
Atticus?” “Yes,” said my father. He was sitting behind his
table; his chair was skewed to one side, his legs were crossed and
one arm was resting on the back of his chair. “Did you call a
doctor, Sheriff? Did anybody call a doctor?” asked Atticus. “No
sir,” said Mr. Tate. “Didn’t call a doctor?” “No sir,”
repeated Mr. Tate. “Why not?” There was an edge to Atticus’s
voice. “Well I can tell you why I didn’t. It wasn’t necessary,
Mr. Finch. She was mighty banged up. Something sho‘ happened, it
was obvious.” “But you didn’t call a doctor? While you were
there did anyone send for one, fetch one, carry her to one?” “No
sir—” Judge Taylor broke in. “He’s answered the question
three times, Atticus. He didn’t call a doctor.” Atticus said, “I
just wanted to make sure, Judge,” and the judge smiled. Jem’s
hand, which was resting on the balcony rail, tightened around it. He
drew in his breath suddenly. Glancing below, I saw no corresponding
reaction, and wondered if Jem was trying to be dramatic. Dill was
watching peacefully, and so was Reverend Sykes beside him. “What is
it?” I whispered, and got a terse, “Sh-h!” “Sheriff,”
Atticus was saying, “you say she was mighty banged up. In what
way?” “Well—” “Just describe her injuries, Heck.” “Well,
she was beaten around the head. There was already bruises comin‘ on
her arms, and it happened about thirty minutes before—” “How do
you know?” Mr. Tate grinned. “Sorry, that’s what they said.
Anyway, she was pretty bruised up when I got there, and she had a
black eye comin‘.” “Which eye?” Mr. Tate blinked and ran his
hands through his hair. “Let’s see,” he said softly, then he
looked at Atticus as if he considered the question childish. “Can’t
you remember?” Atticus asked. Mr. Tate pointed to an invisible
person five inches in front of him and said, “Her left.” “Wait
a minute, Sheriff,” said Atticus. “Was it her left facing you or
her left looking the same way you were?” Mr. Tate said, “Oh yes,
that’d make it her right. It was her right eye, Mr. Finch. I
remember now, she was bunged up on that side of her face…” Mr.
Tate blinked again, as if something had suddenly been made plain to
him. Then he turned his head and looked around at Tom Robinson. As if
by instinct, Tom Robinson raised his head. Something had been made
plain to Atticus also, and it brought him to his feet. “Sheriff,
please repeat what you said.” “It was her right eye, I said.”
“No…” Atticus walked to the court reporter’s desk and bent
down to the furiously scribbling hand. It stopped, flipped back the
shorthand pad, and the court reporter said, “‘Mr. Finch. I
remember now she was bunged up on that side of the face.’”
Atticus looked up at Mr. Tate. “Which side again, Heck?” “The
right side, Mr. Finch, but she had more bruises—you wanta hear
about ‘em?” Atticus seemed to be bordering on another question,
but he thought better of it and 90

said,
“Yes, what were her other injuries?” As Mr. Tate answered,
Atticus turned and looked at Tom Robinson as if to say this was
something they hadn’t bargained for. “…her arms were bruised,
and she showed me her neck. There were definite finger marks on her
gullet—” “All around her throat? At the back of her neck?”
“I’d say they were all around, Mr. Finch.” “You would?”
“Yes sir, she had a small throat, anybody could’a reached around
it with—” “Just answer the question yes or no, please,
Sheriff,” said Atticus dryly, and Mr. Tate fell silent. Atticus sat
down and nodded to the circuit solicitor, who shook his head at the
judge, who nodded to Mr. Tate, who rose stiffly and stepped down from
the witness stand. Below us, heads turned, feet scraped the floor,
babies were shifted to shoulders, and a few children scampered out of
the courtroom. The Negroes behind us whispered softly among
themselves; Dill was asking Reverend Sykes what it was all about, but
Reverend Sykes said he didn’t know. So far, things were utterly
dull: nobody had thundered, there were no arguments between opposing
counsel, there was no drama; a grave disappointment to all present,
it seemed. Atticus was proceeding amiably, as if he were involved in
a title dispute. With his infinite capacity for calming turbulent
seas, he could make a rape case as dry as a sermon. Gone was the
terror in my mind of stale whiskey and barnyard smells, of
sleepy-eyed sullen men, of a husky voice calling in the night, “Mr.
Finch? They gone?” Our nightmare had gone with daylight, everything
would come out all right. All the spectators were as relaxed as Judge
Taylor, except Jem. His mouth was twisted into a purposeful
half-grin, and his eyes happy about, and he said something about
corroborating evidence, which made me sure he was showing off.
“…Robert E. Lee Ewell!” In answer to the clerk’s booming
voice, a little bantam cock of a man rose and strutted to the stand,
the back of his neck reddening at the sound of his name. When he
turned around to take the oath, we saw that his face was as red as
his neck. We also saw no resemblance to his namesake. A shock of
wispy new-washed hair stood up from his forehead; his nose was thin,
pointed, and shiny; he had no chin to speak of—it seemed to be part
of his crepey neck. “—so help me God,” he crowed. Every town
the size of Maycomb had families like the Ewells. No economic
fluctuations changed their status—people like the Ewells lived as
guests of the county in prosperity as well as in the depths of a
depression. No truant officers could keep their numerous offspring in
school; no public health officer could free them from congenital
defects, various worms, and the diseases indigenous to filthy
surroundings. Maycomb’s Ewells lived behind the town garbage dump
in what was once a Negro cabin. The cabin’s plank walls were
supplemented with sheets of corrugated iron, its roof shingled with
tin cans hammered flat, so only its general shape suggested its
original design: square, with four tiny rooms opening onto a shotgun
hall, the cabin rested uneasily upon four irregular lumps of
limestone. Its windows were merely open spaces in the walls, which in
the summertime were covered with greasy strips of cheesecloth to keep
out the varmints that feasted on Maycomb’s refuse. The varmints had
a lean time of it, for the Ewells gave the dump a thorough gleaning
every day, and the fruits of their industry (those that were not
eaten) made the plot of ground around the cabin look like the
playhouse of an insane child: what passed for a fence was bits of
tree-limbs, broomsticks and tool shafts, all tipped with rusty
hammer-heads, snaggle-toothed rake heads, shovels, axes and grubbing
hoes, held on with pieces of barbed wire. Enclosed by this barricade
was a dirty yard containing the remains of a Model-T Ford (on
blocks), a discarded dentist’s chair, an ancient icebox, plus
lesser items: old shoes, worn-out table radios, picture frames, and
fruit jars, under which scrawny orange chickens pecked hopefully. 91

One
corner of the yard, though, bewildered Maycomb. Against the fence, in
a line, were six chipped-enamel slop jars holding brilliant red
geraniums, cared for as tenderly as if they belonged to Miss Maudie
Atkinson, had Miss Maudie deigned to permit a geranium on her
premises. People said they were Mayella Ewell’s. Nobody was quite
sure how many children were on the place. Some people said six,
others said nine; there were always several dirty-faced ones at the
windows when anyone passed by. Nobody had occasion to pass by except
at Christmas, when the churches delivered baskets, and when the mayor
of Maycomb asked us to please help the garbage collector by dumping
our own trees and trash. Atticus took us with him last Christmas when
he complied with the mayor’s request. A dirt road ran from the
highway past the dump, down to a small Negro settlement some five
hundred yards beyond the Ewells‘. It was necessary either to back
out to the highway or go the full length of the road and turn around;
most people turned around in the Negroes’ front yards. In the
frosty December dusk, their cabins looked neat and snug with pale
blue smoke rising from the chimneys and doorways glowing amber from
the fires inside. There were delicious smells about: chicken, bacon
frying crisp as the twilight air. Jem and I detected squirrel
cooking, but it took an old countryman like Atticus to identify
possum and rabbit, aromas that vanished when we rode back past the
Ewell residence. All the little man on the witness stand had that
made him any better than his nearest neighbors was, that if scrubbed
with lye soap in very hot water, his skin was white. “Mr. Robert
Ewell?” asked Mr. Gilmer. “That’s m’name, cap’n,” said
the witness. Mr. Gilmer’s back stiffened a little, and I felt sorry
for him. Perhaps I’d better explain something now. I’ve heard
that lawyers’ children, on seeing their parents in court in the
heat of argument, get the wrong idea: they think opposing counsel to
be the personal enemies of their parents, they suffer agonies, and
are surprised to see them often go out arm-in-arm with their
tormenters during the first recess. This was not true of Jem and me.
We acquired no traumas from watching our father win or lose. I’m
sorry that I can’t provide any drama in this respect; if I did, it
would not be true. We could tell, however, when debate became more
acrimonious than professional, but this was from watching lawyers
other than our father. I never heard Atticus raise his voice in my
life, except to a deaf witness. Mr. Gilmer was doing his job, as
Atticus was doing his. Besides, Mr. Ewell was Mr. Gilmer’s witness,
and he had no business being rude to him of all people. “Are you
the father of Mayella Ewell?” was the next question. “Well, if I
ain’t I can’t do nothing about it now, her ma’s dead,” was
the answer. Judge Taylor stirred. He turned slowly in his swivel
chair and looked benignly at the witness. “Are you the father of
Mayella Ewell?” he asked, in a way that made the laughter below us
stop suddenly. “Yes sir,” Mr. Ewell said meekly. Judge Taylor
went on in tones of good will: “This the first time you’ve ever
been in court? I don’t recall ever seeing you here.” At the
witness’s affirmative nod he continued, “Well, let’s get
something straight. There will be no more audibly obscene
speculations on any subject from anybody in this courtroom as long as
I’m sitting here. Do you understand?” Mr. Ewell nodded, but I
don’t think he did. Judge Taylor sighed and said, “All right, Mr.
Gilmer?” “Thank you, sir. Mr. Ewell, would you tell us in your
own words what happened on the evening of November twenty-first,
please?” Jem grinned and pushed his hair back. Just-in-your-own
words was Mr. Gilmer’s trademark. We often wondered who else’s
words Mr. Gilmer was afraid his witness might employ. “Well, the
night of November twenty-one I was comin‘ in from the woods with a
load o’kindlin’ and just as I got to the fence I heard Mayella
screamin‘ like a stuck hog inside 92

the
house—” Here Judge Taylor glanced sharply at the witness and must
have decided his speculations devoid of evil intent, for he subsided
sleepily. “What time was it, Mr. Ewell?” “Just ‘fore sundown.
Well, I was sayin’ Mayella was screamin‘ fit to beat Jesus—”
another glance from the bench silenced Mr. Ewell. “Yes? She was
screaming?” said Mr. Gilmer. Mr. Ewell looked confusedly at the
judge. “Well, Mayella was raisin‘ this holy racket so I dropped
m’load and run as fast as I could but I run into th’ fence, but
when I got distangled I run up to th‘ window and I seen—” Mr.
Ewell’s face grew scarlet. He stood up and pointed his finger at
Tom Robinson. “—I seen that black nigger yonder ruttin’ on my
Mayella!” So serene was Judge Taylor’s court, that he had few
occasions to use his gavel, but he hammered fully five minutes.
Atticus was on his feet at the bench saying something to him, Mr.
Heck Tate as first officer of the county stood in the middle aisle
quelling the packed courtroom. Behind us, there was an angry muffled
groan from the colored people. Reverend Sykes leaned across Dill and
me, pulling at Jem’s elbow. “Mr. Jem,” he said, “you better
take Miss Jean Louise home. Mr. Jem, you hear me?” Jem turned his
head. “Scout, go home. Dill, you’n‘Scout go home.” “You
gotta make me first,” I said, remembering Atticus’s blessed
dictum. Jem scowled furiously at me, then said to Reverend Sykes, “I
think it’s okay, Reverend, she doesn’t understand it.” I was
mortally offended. “I most certainly do, I c’n understand
anything you can.” “Aw hush. She doesn’t understand it,
Reverend, she ain’t nine yet.” Reverend Sykes’s black eyes were
anxious. “Mr. Finch know you all are here? This ain’t fit for
Miss Jean Louise or you boys either.” Jem shook his head. “He
can’t see us this far away. It’s all right, Reverend.” I knew
Jem would win, because I knew nothing could make him leave now. Dill
and I were safe, for a while: Atticus could see us from where he was,
if he looked. As Judge Taylor banged his gavel, Mr. Ewell was sitting
smugly in the witness chair, surveying his handiwork. With one phrase
he had turned happy picknickers into a sulky, tense, murmuring crowd,
being slowly hypnotized by gavel taps lessening in intensity until
the only sound in the courtroom was a dim pink-pink-pink: the judge
might have been rapping the bench with a pencil. In possession of his
court once more, Judge Taylor leaned back in his chair. He looked
suddenly weary; his age was showing, and I thought about what Atticus
had said—he and Mrs. Taylor didn’t kiss much—he must have been
nearly seventy. “There has been a request,” Judge Taylor said,
“that this courtroom be cleared of spectators, or at least of women
and children, a request that will be denied for the time being.
People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen
for, and they have the right to subject their children to it, but I
can assure you of one thing: you will receive what you see and hear
in silence or you will leave this courtroom, but you won’t leave it
until the whole boiling of you come before me on contempt charges.
Mr. Ewell, you will keep your testimony within the confines of
Christian English usage, if that is possible. Proceed, Mr. Gilmer.”
Mr. Ewell reminded me of a deaf-mute. I was sure he had never heard
the words Judge Taylor directed at him—his mouth struggled silently
with them—but their import registered on his face. Smugness faded
from it, replaced by a dogged earnestness that fooled Judge Taylor
not at all: as long as Mr. Ewell was on the stand, the judge kept his
eyes on him, as if daring him to make a false move. Mr. Gilmer and
Atticus exchanged glances. Atticus was sitting down again, his fist
rested on his cheek and we could not see his face. Mr. Gilmer looked
rather desperate. A question from Judge Taylor made him relax: “Mr.
Ewell, did you see the defendant having sexual intercourse with your
daughter?” 93

“Yes,
I did.” The spectators were quiet, but the defendant said
something. Atticus whispered to him, and Tom Robinson was silent.
“You say you were at the window?” asked Mr. Gilmer. “Yes sir.”
“How far is it from the ground?” “‘bout three foot.” “Did
you have a clear view of the room?” “Yes sir.” “How did the
room look?” “Well, it was all slung about, like there was a
fight.” “What did you do when you saw the defendant?” “Well,
I run around the house to get in, but he run out the front door just
ahead of me. I sawed who he was, all right. I was too distracted
about Mayella to run after’im. I run in the house and she was lyin‘
on the floor squallin’—” “Then what did you do?” “Why, I
run for Tate quick as I could. I knowed who it was, all right, lived
down yonder in that nigger-nest, passed the house every day. Jedge,
I’ve asked this county for fifteen years to clean out that nest
down yonder, they’re dangerous to live around ‘sides devaluin’
my property—” “Thank you, Mr. Ewell,” said Mr. Gilmer
hurriedly. The witness made a hasty descent from the stand and ran
smack into Atticus, who had risen to question him. Judge Taylor
permitted the court to laugh. “Just a minute, sir,” said Atticus
genially. “Could I ask you a question or two?” Mr. Ewell backed
up into the witness chair, settled himself, and regarded Atticus with
haughty suspicion, an expression common to Maycomb County witnesses
when confronted by opposing counsel. “Mr. Ewell,” Atticus began,
“folks were doing a lot of running that night. Let’s see, you say
you ran to the house, you ran to the window, you ran inside, you ran
to Mayella, you ran for Mr. Tate. Did you, during all this running,
run for a doctor?” “Wadn’t no need to. I seen what happened.”
“But there’s one thing I don’t understand,” said Atticus.
“Weren’t you concerned with Mayella’s condition?” “I most
positively was,” said Mr. Ewell. “I seen who done it.” “No, I
mean her physical condition. Did you not think the nature of her
injuries warranted immediate medical attention?” “What?”
“Didn’t you think she should have had a doctor, immediately?”
The witness said he never thought of it, he had never called a doctor
to any of his’n in his life, and if he had it would have cost him
five dollars. “That all?” he asked. “Not quite,” said Atticus
casually. “Mr. Ewell, you heard the sheriff’s testimony, didn’t
you?” “How’s that?” “You were in the courtroom when Mr.
Heck Tate was on the stand, weren’t you? You heard everything he
said, didn’t you?” Mr. Ewell considered the matter carefully, and
seemed to decide that the question was safe. “Yes,” he said. “Do
you agree with his description of Mayella’s injuries?” “How’s
that?” Atticus looked around at Mr. Gilmer and smiled. Mr. Ewell
seemed determined not to give the defense the time of day. “Mr.
Tate testified that her right eye was blackened, that she was beaten
around the—” “Oh yeah,” said the witness. “I hold with
everything Tate said.” 94

“You
do?” asked Atticus mildly. “I just want to make sure.” He went
to the court reporter, said something, and the reporter entertained
us for some minutes by reading Mr. Tate’s testimony as if it were
stock-market quotations: “…which eye her left oh yes that’d
make it her right it was her right eye Mr. Finch I remember now she
was bunged.” He flipped the page. “Up on that side of the face
Sheriff please repeat what you said it was her right eye I said—”
“Thank you, Bert,” said Atticus. “You heard it again, Mr.
Ewell. Do you have anything to add to it? Do you agree with the
sheriff?” “I holds with Tate. Her eye was blacked and she was
mighty beat up.” The little man seemed to have forgotten his
previous humiliation from the bench. It was becoming evident that he
thought Atticus an easy match. He seemed to grow ruddy again; his
chest swelled, and once more he was a red little rooster. I thought
he’d burst his shirt at Atticus’s next question: “Mr. Ewell,
can you read and write?” Mr. Gilmer interrupted. “Objection,”
he said. “Can’t see what witness’s literacy has to do with the
case, irrelevant’n‘immaterial.” Judge Taylor was about to speak
but Atticus said, “Judge, if you’ll allow the question plus
another one you’ll soon see.” “All right, let’s see,” said
Judge Taylor, “but make sure we see, Atticus. Overruled.” Mr.
Gilmer seemed as curious as the rest of us as to what bearing the
state of Mr. Ewell’s education had on the case. “I’ll repeat
the question,” said Atticus. “Can you read and write?” “I
most positively can.” “Will you write your name and show us?”
“I most positively will. How do you think I sign my relief checks?”
Mr. Ewell was endearing himself to his fellow citizens. The whispers
and chuckles below us probably had to do with what a card he was. I
was becoming nervous. Atticus seemed to know what he was doing—but
it seemed to me that he’d gone frog-sticking without a light.
Never, never, never, on cross-examination ask a witness a question
you don’t already know the answer to, was a tenet I absorbed with
my baby-food. Do it, and you’ll often get an answer you don’t
want, an answer that might wreck your case. Atticus was reaching into
the inside pocket of his coat. He drew out an envelope, then reached
into his vest pocket and unclipped his fountain pen. He moved
leisurely, and had turned so that he was in full view of the jury. He
unscrewed the fountain-pen cap and placed it gently on his table. He
shook the pen a little, then handed it with the envelope to the
witness. “Would you write your name for us?” he asked. “Clearly
now, so the jury can see you do it.” Mr. Ewell wrote on the back of
the envelope and looked up complacently to see Judge Taylor staring
at him as if he were some fragrant gardenia in full bloom on the
witness stand, to see Mr. Gilmer half-sitting, half-standing at his
table. The jury was watching him, one man was leaning forward with
his hands over the railing. “What’s so interestin‘?” he
asked. “You’re left-handed, Mr. Ewell,” said Judge Taylor. Mr.
Ewell turned angrily to the judge and said he didn’t see what his
being left-handed had to do with it, that he was a Christ-fearing man
and Atticus Finch was taking advantage of him. Tricking lawyers like
Atticus Finch took advantage of him all the time with their tricking
ways. He had told them what happened, he’d say it again and
again—which he did. Nothing Atticus asked him after that shook his
story, that he’d looked through the window, then ran the nigger
off, then ran for the sheriff. Atticus finally dismissed him. Mr.
Gilmer asked him one more question. “About your writing with your
left hand, are you ambidextrous, Mr. Ewell?” “I most positively
am not, I can use one hand good as the other. One hand good as the
other,” he added, glaring at the defense table. Jem seemed to be
having a quiet fit. He was pounding the balcony rail softly, and 95

once
he whispered, “We’ve got him.” I didn’t think so: Atticus was
trying to show, it seemed to me, that Mr. Ewell could have beaten up
Mayella. That much I could follow. If her right eye was blacked and
she was beaten mostly on the right side of the face, it would tend to
show that a left-handed person did it. Sherlock Holmes and Jem Finch
would agree. But Tom Robinson could easily be left-handed, too. Like
Mr. Heck Tate, I imagined a person facing me, went through a swift
mental pantomime, and concluded that he might have held her with his
right hand and pounded her with his left. I looked down at him. His
back was to us, but I could see his broad shoulders and bull-thick
neck. He could easily have done it. I thought Jem was counting his
chickens.

Chapter
18

But
someone was booming again. “Mayella Violet Ewell—!” A young
girl walked to the witness stand. As she raised her hand and swore
that the evidence she gave would be the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth so help her God, she seemed somehow
fragile-looking, but when she sat facing us in the witness chair she
became what she was, a thick-bodied girl accustomed to strenuous
labor. In Maycomb County, it was easy to tell when someone bathed
regularly, as opposed to yearly lavations: Mr. Ewell had a scalded
look; as if an overnight soaking had deprived him of protective
layers of dirt, his skin appeared to be sensitive to the elements.
Mayella looked as if she tried to keep clean, and I was reminded of
the row of red geraniums in the Ewell yard. Mr. Gilmer asked Mayella
to tell the jury in her own words what happened on the evening of
November twenty-first of last year, just in her own words, please.
Mayella sat silently. “Where were you at dusk on that evening?”
began Mr. Gilmer patiently. “On the porch.” “Which porch?”
“Ain’t but one, the front porch.” “What were you doing on the
porch?” “Nothin‘.” Judge Taylor said, “Just tell us what
happened. You can do that, can’t you?” Mayella stared at him and
burst into tears. She covered her mouth with her hands and sobbed.
Judge Taylor let her cry for a while, then he said, “That’s
enough now. Don’t be ‘fraid of anybody here, as long as you tell
the truth. All this is strange to you, I know, but you’ve nothing
to be ashamed of and nothing to fear. What are you scared of?”
Mayella said something behind her hands. “What was that?” asked
the judge. “Him,” she sobbed, pointing at Atticus. “Mr. Finch?”
She nodded vigorously, saying, “Don’t want him doin‘ me like he
done Papa, tryin’ to make him out lefthanded…” Judge Taylor
scratched his thick white hair. It was plain that he had never been
confronted with a problem of this kind. “How old are you?” he
asked. “Nineteen-and-a-half,” Mayella said. Judge Taylor cleared
his throat and tried unsuccessfully to speak in soothing tones. “Mr.
Finch has no idea of scaring you,” he growled, “and if he did,
I’m here to stop him. That’s one thing I’m sitting up here for.
Now you’re a big girl, so you just sit up straight and tell
the—tell us what happened to you. You can do that, can’t you?”
I whispered to Jem, “Has she got good sense?” Jem was squinting
down at the witness stand. “Can’t tell yet,” he said. “She’s
got enough sense to get the judge sorry for her, but she might be
just—oh, I don’t know.” Mollified, Mayella gave Atticus a final
terrified glance and said to Mr. Gilmer, “Well sir, 96

I
was on the porch and—and he came along and, you see, there was this
old chiffarobe in the yard Papa’d brought in to chop up for
kindlin‘—Papa told me to do it while he was off in the woods but
I wadn’t feelin’ strong enough then, so he came by-” “Who is
‘he’?” Mayella pointed to Tom Robinson. “I’ll have to ask
you to be more specific, please,” said Mr. Gilmer. “The reporter
can’t put down gestures very well.” “That’n yonder,” she
said. “Robinson.” “Then what happened?” “I said come here,
nigger, and bust up this chiffarobe for me, I gotta nickel for you.
He coulda done it easy enough, he could. So he come in the yard an‘
I went in the house to get him the nickel and I turned around an
’fore I knew it he was on me. Just run up behind me, he did. He got
me round the neck, cussin‘ me an’ sayin‘ dirt—I
fought’n’hollered, but he had me round the neck. He hit me agin
an‘ agin—” Mr. Gilmer waited for Mayella to collect herself:
she had twisted her handkerchief into a sweaty rope; when she opened
it to wipe her face it was a mass of creases from her hot hands. She
waited for Mr. Gilmer to ask another question, but when he didn’t,
she said, “-he chunked me on the floor an‘ choked me’n took
advantage of me.” “Did you scream?” asked Mr. Gilmer. “Did
you scream and fight back?” “Reckon I did, hollered for all I was
worth, kicked and hollered loud as I could.” “Then what
happened?” “I don’t remember too good, but next thing I knew
Papa was in the room a’standing over me hollerin‘ who done it,
who done it? Then I sorta fainted an’ the next thing I knew Mr.
Tate was pullin‘ me up offa the floor and leadin’ me to the water
bucket.” Apparently Mayella’s recital had given her confidence,
but it was not her father’s brash kind: there was something
stealthy about hers, like a steady-eyed cat with a twitchy tail. “You
say you fought him off as hard as you could? Fought him tooth and
nail?” asked Mr. Gilmer. “I positively did,” Mayella echoed her
father. “You are positive that he took full advantage of you?”
Mayella’s face contorted, and I was afraid that she would cry
again. Instead, she said, “He done what he was after.” Mr. Gilmer
called attention to the hot day by wiping his head with his hand.
“That’s all for the time being,” he said pleasantly, “but you
stay there. I expect big bad Mr. Finch has some questions to ask
you.” “State will not prejudice the witness against counsel for
the defense,” murmured Judge Taylor primly, “at least not at this
time.” Atticus got up grinning but instead of walking to the
witness stand, he opened his coat and hooked his thumbs in his vest,
then he walked slowly across the room to the windows. He looked out,
but didn’t seem especially interested in what he saw, then he
turned and strolled back to the witness stand. From long years of
experience, I could tell he was trying to come to a decision about
something. “Miss Mayella,” he said, smiling, “I won’t try to
scare you for a while, not yet. Let’s just get acquainted. How old
are you?” “Said I was nineteen, said it to the judge yonder.”
Mayella jerked her head resentfully at the bench. “So you did, so
you did, ma’am. You’ll have to bear with me, Miss Mayella, I’m
getting along and can’t remember as well as I used to. I might ask
you things you’ve already said before, but you’ll give me an
answer, won’t you? Good.” I could see nothing in Mayella’s
expression to justify Atticus’s assumption that he had secured her
wholehearted cooperation. She was looking at him furiously. “Won’t
answer a word you say long as you keep on mockin‘ me,” she said.
“Ma’am?” asked Atticus, startled. “Long’s you keep on
makin‘ fun o’me.” Judge Taylor said, “Mr. Finch is not making
fun of you. What’s the matter with you?” Mayella looked from
under lowered eyelids at Atticus, but she said to the judge: 97

“Long’s
he keeps on callin‘ me ma’am an sayin’ Miss Mayella. I don’t
hafta take his sass, I ain’t called upon to take it.” Atticus
resumed his stroll to the windows and let Judge Taylor handle this
one. Judge Taylor was not the kind of figure that ever evoked pity,
but I did feel a pang for him as he tried to explain. “That’s
just Mr. Finch’s way,” he told Mayella. “We’ve done business
in this court for years and years, and Mr. Finch is always courteous
to everybody. He’s not trying to mock you, he’s trying to be
polite. That’s just his way.” The judge leaned back. “Atticus,
let’s get on with these proceedings, and let the record show that
the witness has not been sassed, her views to the contrary.” I
wondered if anybody had ever called her “ma’am,” or “Miss
Mayella” in her life; probably not, as she took offense to routine
courtesy. What on earth was her life like? I soon found out. “You
say you’re nineteen,” Atticus resumed. “How many sisters and
brothers have you?” He walked from the windows back to the stand.
“Seb’m,” she said, and I wondered if they were all like the
specimen I had seen the first day I started to school. “You the
eldest? The oldest?” “Yes.” “How long has your mother been
dead?” “Don’t know—long time.” “Did you ever go to
school?” “Read’n‘write good as Papa yonder.” Mayella
sounded like a Mr. Jingle in a book I had been reading. “How long
did you go to school?” “Two year—three year—dunno.” Slowly
but surely I began to see the pattern of Atticus’s questions: from
questions that Mr. Gilmer did not deem sufficiently irrelevant or
immaterial to object to, Atticus was quietly building up before the
jury a picture of the Ewells’ home life. The jury learned the
following things: their relief check was far from enough to feed the
family, and there was strong suspicion that Papa drank it up
anyway—he sometimes went off in the swamp for days and came home
sick; the weather was seldom cold enough to require shoes, but when
it was, you could make dandy ones from strips of old tires; the
family hauled its water in buckets from a spring that ran out at one
end of the dump—they kept the surrounding area clear of trash—and
it was everybody for himself as far as keeping clean went: if you
wanted to wash you hauled your own water; the younger children had
perpetual colds and suffered from chronic ground-itch; there was a
lady who came around sometimes and asked Mayella why she didn’t
stay in school—she wrote down the answer; with two members of the
family reading and writing, there was no need for the rest of them to
learn—Papa needed them at home. “Miss Mayella,” said Atticus,
in spite of himself, “a nineteen-year-old girl like you must have
friends. Who are your friends?” The witness frowned as if puzzled.
“Friends?” “Yes, don’t you know anyone near your age, or
older, or younger? Boys and girls? Just ordinary friends?”
Mayella’s hostility, which had subsided to grudging neutrality,
flared again. “You makin‘ fun o’me agin, Mr. Finch?” Atticus
let her question answer his. “Do you love your father, Miss
Mayella?” was his next. “Love him, whatcha mean?” “I mean, is
he good to you, is he easy to get along with?” “He does tollable,
‘cept when—” “Except when?” Mayella looked at her father,
who was sitting with his chair tipped against the railing. He sat up
straight and waited for her to answer. “Except when nothin‘,”
said Mayella. “I said he does tollable.” 98

Mr.
Ewell leaned back again. “Except when he’s drinking?” asked
Atticus so gently that Mayella nodded. “Does he ever go after you?”
“How you mean?” “When he’s—riled, has he ever beaten you?”
Mayella looked around, down at the court reporter, up at the judge.
“Answer the question, Miss Mayella,” said Judge Taylor. “My
paw’s never touched a hair o’my head in my life,” she declared
firmly. “He never touched me.” Atticus’s glasses had slipped a
little, and he pushed them up on his nose. “We’ve had a good
visit, Miss Mayella, and now I guess we’d better get to the case.
You say you asked Tom Robinson to come chop up a—what was it?” “A
chiffarobe, a old dresser full of drawers on one side.” “Was Tom
Robinson well known to you?” “Whaddya mean?” “I mean did you
know who he was, where he lived?” Mayella nodded. “I knowed who
he was, he passed the house every day.” “Was this the first time
you asked him to come inside the fence?” Mayella jumped slightly at
the question. Atticus was making his slow pilgrimage to the windows,
as he had been doing: he would ask a question, then look out, waiting
for an answer. He did not see her involuntary jump, but it seemed to
me that he knew she had moved. He turned around and raised his
eyebrows. “Was—” he began again. “Yes it was.” “Didn’t
you ever ask him to come inside the fence before?” She was prepared
now. “I did not, I certainly did not.” “One did not’s
enough,” said Atticus serenely. “You never asked him to do odd
jobs for you before?” “I mighta,” conceded Mayella. “There
was several niggers around.” “Can you remember any other
occasions?” “No.” “All right, now to what happened. You said
Tom Robinson was behind you in the room when you turned around, that
right?” “Yes.” “You said he ‘got you around the neck
cussing and saying dirt’—is that right?” “‘t’s right.”
Atticus’s memory had suddenly become accurate. “You say ‘he
caught me and choked me and took advantage of me’—is that right?”
“That’s what I said.” “Do you remember him beating you about
the face?” The witness hesitated. “You seem sure enough that he
choked you. All this time you were fighting back, remember? You
‘kicked and hollered as loud as you could.’ Do you remember him
beating you about the face?” Mayella was silent. She seemed to be
trying to get something clear to herself. I thought for a moment she
was doing Mr. Heck Tate’s and my trick of pretending there was a
person in front of us. She glanced at Mr. Gilmer. “It’s an easy
question, Miss Mayella, so I’ll try again. Do you remember him
beating you about the face?” Atticus’s voice had lost its
comfortableness; he was speaking in his arid, detached professional
voice. “Do you remember him beating you about the face?” “No, I
don’t recollect if he hit me. I mean yes I do, he hit me.” “Was
your last sentence your answer?” “Huh? Yes, he hit—I just don’t
remember, I just don’t remember… it all happened so quick.”
Judge Taylor looked sternly at Mayella. “Don’t you cry, young
woman—” he began, but Atticus said, “Let her cry if she wants
to, Judge. We’ve got all the time in the world.” 99

Mayella
sniffed wrathfully and looked at Atticus. “I’ll answer any
question you got—get me up here an‘ mock me, will you? I’ll
answer any question you got—” “That’s fine,” said Atticus.
“There’re only a few more. Miss Mayella, not to be tedious,
you’ve testified that the defendant hit you, grabbed you around the
neck, choked you, and took advantage of you. I want you to be sure
you have the right man. Will you identify the man who raped you?”
“I will, that’s him right yonder.” Atticus turned to the
defendant. “Tom, stand up. Let Miss Mayella have a good long look
at you. Is this the man, Miss Mayella?” Tom Robinson’s powerful
shoulders rippled under his thin shirt. He rose to his feet and stood
with his right hand on the back of his chair. He looked oddly off
balance, but it was not from the way he was standing. His left arm
was fully twelve inches shorter than his right, and hung dead at his
side. It ended in a small shriveled hand, and from as far away as the
balcony I could see that it was no use to him. “Scout,” breathed
Jem. “Scout, look! Reverend, he’s crippled!” Reverend Sykes
leaned across me and whispered to Jem. “He got it caught in a
cotton gin, caught it in Mr. Dolphus Raymond’s cotton gin when he
was a boy… like to bled to death… tore all the muscles loose from
his bones—” Atticus said, “Is this the man who raped you?”
“It most certainly is.” Atticus’s next question was one word
long. “How?” Mayella was raging. “I don’t know how he done
it, but he done it—I said it all happened so fast I—” “Now
let’s consider this calmly—” began Atticus, but Mr. Gilmer
interrupted with an objection: he was not irrelevant or immaterial,
but Atticus was browbeating the witness. Judge Taylor laughed
outright. “Oh sit down, Horace, he’s doing nothing of the sort.
If anything, the witness’s browbeating Atticus.” Judge Taylor was
the only person in the courtroom who laughed. Even the babies were
still, and I suddenly wondered if they had been smothered at their
mothers’ breasts. “Now,” said Atticus, “Miss Mayella, you’ve
testified that the defendant choked and beat you—you didn’t say
that he sneaked up behind you and knocked you cold, but you turned
around and there he was—” Atticus was back behind his table, and
he emphasized his words by tapping his knuckles on it. “—do you
wish to reconsider any of your testimony?” “You want me to say
something that didn’t happen?” “No ma’am, I want you to say
something that did happen. Tell us once more, please, what happened?”
“I told’ja what happened.” “You testified that you turned
around and there he was. He choked you then?” “Yes.” “Then he
released your throat and hit you?” “I said he did.” “He
blacked your left eye with his right fist?” “I ducked and it—it
glanced, that’s what it did. I ducked and it glanced off.”
Mayella had finally seen the light. “You’re becoming suddenly
clear on this point. A while ago you couldn’t remember too well,
could you?” “I said he hit me.” “All right. He choked you, he
hit you, then he raped you, that right?” “It most certainly is.”
“You’re a strong girl, what were you doing all the time, just
standing there?” “I told’ja I hollered’n‘kicked’n’fought—”
Atticus reached up and took off his glasses, turned his good right
eye to the witness, and rained questions on her. Judge Taylor said,
“One question at a time, Atticus. Give 100

the
witness a chance to answer.” “All right, why didn’t you run?”
“I tried…” “Tried to? What kept you from it?” “I—he
slung me down. That’s what he did, he slung me down’n got on top
of me.” “You were screaming all this time?” “I certainly
was.” “Then why didn’t the other children hear you? Where were
they? At the dump?” “Where were they?” No answer. “Why didn’t
your screams make them come running? The dump’s closer than the
woods, isn’t it?” No answer. “Or didn’t you scream until you
saw your father in the window? You didn’t think to scream until
then, did you?” No answer. “Did you scream first at your father
instead of at Tom Robinson? Was that it?” No answer. “Who beat
you up? Tom Robinson or your father?” No answer. “What did your
father see in the window, the crime of rape or the best defense to
it? Why don’t you tell the truth, child, didn’t Bob Ewell beat
you up?” When Atticus turned away from Mayella he looked like his
stomach hurt, but Mayella’s face was a mixture of terror and fury.
Atticus sat down wearily and polished his glasses with his
handkerchief. Suddenly Mayella became articulate. “I got somethin‘
to say,” she said. Atticus raised his head. “Do you want to tell
us what happened?” But she did not hear the compassion in his
invitation. “I got somethin‘ to say an’ then I ain’t gonna
say no more. That nigger yonder took advantage of me an‘ if you
fine fancy gentlemen don’t wanta do nothin’ about it then you’re
all yellow stinkin‘ cowards, stinkin’ cowards, the lot of you.
Your fancy airs don’t come to nothin‘—your ma’amin’ and
Miss Mayellerin‘ don’t come to nothin’, Mr. Finch—” Then
she burst into real tears. Her shoulders shook with angry sobs. She
was as good as her word. She answered no more questions, even when
Mr. Gilmer tried to get her back on the track. I guess if she hadn’t
been so poor and ignorant, Judge Taylor would have put her under the
jail for the contempt she had shown everybody in the courtroom.
Somehow, Atticus had hit her hard in a way that was not clear to me,
but it gave him no pleasure to do so. He sat with his head down, and
I never saw anybody glare at anyone with the hatred Mayella showed
when she left the stand and walked by Atticus’s table. When Mr.
Gilmer told Judge Taylor that the state rested, Judge Taylor said,
“It’s time we all did. We’ll take ten minutes.” Atticus and
Mr. Gilmer met in front of the bench and whispered, then they left
the courtroom by a door behind the witness stand, which was a signal
for us all to stretch. I discovered that I had been sitting on the
edge of the long bench, and I was somewhat numb. Jem got up and
yawned, Dill did likewise, and Reverend Sykes wiped his face on his
hat. The temperature was an easy ninety, he said. Mr. Braxton
Underwood, who had been sitting quietly in a chair reserved for the
Press, soaking up testimony with his sponge of a brain, allowed his
bitter eyes to rove over the colored balcony, and they met mine. He
gave a snort and looked away. “Jem,” I said, “Mr. Underwood’s
seen us.” “That’s okay. He won’t tell Atticus, he’ll just
put it on the social side of the Tribune.”
Jem turned back to Dill, explaining, I suppose, the finer points of
the trial to him, but I wondered what they were. There had been no
lengthy debates between Atticus and Mr. Gilmer on any points; Mr.
Gilmer seemed to be prosecuting almost reluctantly; witnesses had
been led by the nose as asses are, with few objections. But Atticus
had 101

once
told us that in Judge Taylor’s court any lawyer who was a strict
constructionist on evidence usually wound up receiving strict
instructions from the bench. He distilled this for me to mean that
Judge Taylor might look lazy and operate in his sleep, but he was
seldom reversed, and that was the proof of the pudding. Atticus said
he was a good judge. Presently Judge Taylor returned and climbed into
his swivel chair. He took a cigar from his vest pocket and examined
it thoughtfully. I punched Dill. Having passed the judge’s
inspection, the cigar suffered a vicious bite. “We come down
sometimes to watch him,” I explained. “It’s gonna take him the
rest of the afternoon, now. You watch.” Unaware of public scrutiny
from above, Judge Taylor disposed of the severed end by propelling it
expertly to his lips and saying, “Fhluck!” He hit a spittoon so
squarely we could hear it slosh. “Bet he was hell with a spitball,”
murmured Dill. As a rule, a recess meant a general exodus, but today
people weren’t moving. Even the Idlers who had failed to shame
younger men from their seats had remained standing along the walls. I
guess Mr. Heck Tate had reserved the county toilet for court
officials. Atticus and Mr. Gilmer returned, and Judge Taylor looked
at his watch. “It’s gettin‘ on to four,” he said, which was
intriguing, as the courthouse clock must have struck the hour at
least twice. I had not heard it or felt its vibrations. “Shall we
try to wind up this afternoon?” asked Judge Taylor. “How ‘bout
it, Atticus?” “I think we can,” said Atticus. “How many
witnesses you got?” “One.” “Well, call him.”

Chapter
19

Thomas
Robinson reached around, ran his fingers under his left arm and
lifted it. He guided his arm to the Bible and his rubber-like left
hand sought contact with the black binding. As he raised his right
hand, the useless one slipped off the Bible and hit the clerk’s
table. He was trying again when Judge Taylor growled, “That’ll
do, Tom.” Tom took the oath and stepped into the witness chair.
Atticus very quickly induced him to tell us: Tom was twenty-five
years of age; he was married with three children; he had been in
trouble with the law before: he once received thirty days for
disorderly conduct. “It must have been disorderly,” said Atticus.
“What did it consist of?” “Got in a fight with another man, he
tried to cut me.” “Did he succeed?” “Yes suh, a little, not
enough to hurt. You see, I—” Tom moved his left shoulder. “Yes,”
said Atticus. “You were both convicted?” “Yes suh, I had to
serve ‘cause I couldn’t pay the fine. Other fellow paid his’n.”
Dill leaned across me and asked Jem what Atticus was doing. Jem said
Atticus was showing the jury that Tom had nothing to hide. “Were
you acquainted with Mayella Violet Ewell?” asked Atticus. “Yes
suh, I had to pass her place goin‘ to and from the field every
day.” “Whose field?” “I picks for Mr. Link Deas.” “Were
you picking cotton in November?” “No suh, I works in his yard
fall an‘ wintertime. I works pretty steady for him all year round,
he’s got a lot of pecan trees’n things.” “You say you had to
pass the Ewell place to get to and from work. Is there any other way
to go?” “No suh, none’s I know of.” “Tom, did she ever
speak to you?” “Why, yes suh, I’d tip m’hat when I’d go by,
and one day she asked me to come inside the fence and bust up a
chiffarobe for her.” 102

“When
did she ask you to chop up the—the chiffarobe?” “Mr. Finch, it
was way last spring. I remember it because it was choppin‘ time and
I had my hoe with me. I said I didn’t have nothin’ but this hoe,
but she said she had a hatchet. She give me the hatchet and I broke
up the chiffarobe. She said, ‘I reckon I’ll hafta give you a
nickel, won’t I?’ an‘ I said, ’No ma’am, there ain’t no
charge.‘ Then I went home. Mr. Finch, that was way last spring, way
over a year ago.” “Did you ever go on the place again?” “Yes
suh.” “When?” “Well, I went lots of times.” Judge Taylor
instinctively reached for his gavel, but let his hand fall. The
murmur below us died without his help. “Under what circumstances?”
“Please, suh?” “Why did you go inside the fence lots of times?”
Tom Robinson’s forehead relaxed. “She’d call me in, suh. Seemed
like every time I passed by yonder she’d have some little somethin‘
for me to do—choppin’ kindlin‘, totin’ water for her. She
watered them red flowers every day—” “Were you paid for your
services?” “No suh, not after she offered me a nickel the first
time. I was glad to do it, Mr. Ewell didn’t seem to help her none,
and neither did the chillun, and I knowed she didn’t have no
nickels to spare.” “Where were the other children?” “They was
always around, all over the place. They’d watch me work, some of
‘em, some of ’em’d set in the window.” “Would Miss Mayella
talk to you?” “Yes sir, she talked to me.” As Tom Robinson gave
his testimony, it came to me that Mayella Ewell must have been the
loneliest person in the world. She was even lonelier than Boo Radley,
who had not been out of the house in twenty-five years. When Atticus
asked had she any friends, she seemed not to know what he meant, then
she thought he was making fun of her. She was as sad, I thought, as
what Jem called a mixed child: white people wouldn’t have anything
to do with her because she lived among pigs; Negroes wouldn’t have
anything to do with her because she was white. She couldn’t live
like Mr. Dolphus Raymond, who preferred the company of Negroes,
because she didn’t own a riverbank and she wasn’t from a fine old
family. Nobody said, “That’s just their way,” about the Ewells.
Maycomb gave them Christmas baskets, welfare money, and the back of
its hand. Tom Robinson was probably the only person who was ever
decent to her. But she said he took advantage of her, and when she
stood up she looked at him as if he were dirt beneath her feet. “Did
you ever,” Atticus interrupted my meditations, “at any time, go
on the Ewell property—did you ever set foot on the Ewell property
without an express invitation from one of them?” “No suh, Mr.
Finch, I never did. I wouldn’t do that, suh.” Atticus sometimes
said that one way to tell whether a witness was lying or telling the
truth was to listen rather than watch: I applied his test—Tom
denied it three times in one breath, but quietly, with no hint of
whining in his voice, and I found myself believing him in spite of
his protesting too much. He seemed to be a respectable Negro, and a
respectable Negro would never go up into somebody’s yard of his own
volition. “Tom, what happened to you on the evening of November
twenty-first of last year?” Below us, the spectators drew a
collective breath and leaned forward. Behind us, the Negroes did the
same. Tom was a black-velvet Negro, not shiny, but soft black velvet.
The whites of his eyes shone in his face, and when he spoke we saw
flashes of his teeth. If he had been whole, he would have been a fine
specimen of a man. 103

“Mr.
Finch,” he said, “I was goin‘ home as usual that evenin’, an‘
when I passed the Ewell place Miss Mayella were on the porch, like
she said she were. It seemed real quiet like, an’ I didn’t quite
know why. I was studyin‘ why, just passin’ by, when she says for
me to come there and help her a minute. Well, I went inside the fence
an‘ looked around for some kindlin’ to work on, but I didn’t
see none, and she says, ‘Naw, I got somethin’ for you to do in
the house. Th‘ old door’s off its hinges an’ fall’s comin‘
on pretty fast.’ I said you got a screwdriver, Miss Mayella? She
said she sho‘ had. Well, I went up the steps an’ she motioned me
to come inside, and I went in the front room an‘ looked at the
door. I said Miss Mayella, this door look all right. I pulled it
back’n forth and those hinges was all right. Then she shet the door
in my face. Mr. Finch, I was wonderin’ why it was so quiet like,
an‘ it come to me that there weren’t a chile on the place, not a
one of ’em, and I said Miss Mayella, where the chillun?” Tom’s
black velvet skin had begun to shine, and he ran his hand over his
face. “I say where the chillun?” he continued, “an‘ she
says—she was laughin’, sort of—she says they all gone to town
to get ice creams. She says, ‘took me a slap year to save seb’m
nickels, but I done it. They all gone to town.’” Tom’s
discomfort was not from the humidity. “What did you say then, Tom?”
asked Atticus. “I said somethin‘ like, why Miss Mayella, that’s
right smart o’you to treat ’em. An‘ she said, ’You think so?‘
I don’t think she understood what I was thinkin’—I meant it was
smart of her to save like that, an‘ nice of her to treat em.” “I
understand you, Tom. Go on,” said Atticus. “Well, I said I best
be goin‘, I couldn’t do nothin’ for her, an‘ she says oh yes
I could, an’ I ask her what, and she says to just step on that
chair yonder an‘ git that box down from on top of the chiffarobe.”
“Not the same chiffarobe you busted up?” asked Atticus. The
witness smiled. “Naw suh, another one. Most as tall as the room. So
I done what she told me, an‘ I was just reachin’ when the next
thing I knows she—she’d grabbed me round the legs, grabbed me
round th‘ legs, Mr. Finch. She scared me so bad I hopped down an’
turned the chair over—that was the only thing, only furniture,
‘sturbed in that room, Mr. Finch, when I left it. I swear ’fore
God.” “What happened after you turned the chair over?” Tom
Robinson had come to a dead stop. He glanced at Atticus, then at the
jury, then at Mr. Underwood sitting across the room. “Tom, you’re
sworn to tell the whole truth. Will you tell it?” Tom ran his hand
nervously over his mouth. “What happened after that?” “Answer
the question,” said Judge Taylor. One-third of his cigar had
vanished. “Mr. Finch, I got down offa that chair an‘ turned
around an’ she sorta jumped on me.” “Jumped on you? Violently?”
“No suh, she—she hugged me. She hugged me round the waist.”
This time Judge Taylor’s gavel came down with a bang, and as it did
the overhead lights went on in the courtroom. Darkness had not come,
but the afternoon sun had left the windows. Judge Taylor quickly
restored order. “Then what did she do?” The witness swallowed
hard. “She reached up an‘ kissed me ’side of th‘ face. She
says she never kissed a grown man before an’ she might as well kiss
a nigger. She says what her papa do to her don’t count. She says,
‘Kiss me back, nigger.’ I say Miss Mayella lemme outa here an‘
tried to run but she got her back to the door an’ I’da had to
push her. I didn’t wanta harm her, Mr. Finch, an‘ I say lemme
pass, but just when I say it Mr. Ewell yonder hollered through th’
window.” “What did he say?” Tom Robinson swallowed again, and
his eyes widened. “Somethin‘ not fittin’ to say—not fittin‘
for these folks’n chillun to hear—” “What did he say, Tom?
You must
tell
the jury what he said.” 104

Tom
Robinson shut his eyes tight. “He says you goddamn whore, I’ll
kill ya.” “Then what happened?” “Mr. Finch, I was runnin‘
so fast I didn’t know what happened.” “Tom, did you rape
Mayella Ewell?” “I did not, suh.” “Did you harm her in any
way?” “I did not, suh.” “Did you resist her advances?” “Mr.
Finch, I tried. I tried to ‘thout bein’ ugly to her. I didn’t
wanta be ugly, I didn’t wanta push her or nothin‘.” It occurred
to me that in their own way, Tom Robinson’s manners were as good as
Atticus’s. Until my father explained it to me later, I did not
understand the subtlety of Tom’s predicament: he would not have
dared strike a white woman under any circumstances and expect to live
long, so he took the first opportunity to run—a sure sign of guilt.
“Tom, go back once more to Mr. Ewell,” said Atticus. “Did he
say anything to you?” “Not anything, suh. He mighta said
somethin‘, but I weren’t there—” “That’ll do,” Atticus
cut in sharply. “What you did hear, who was he talking to?” “Mr.
Finch, he were talkin‘ and lookin’ at Miss Mayella.” “Then
you ran?” “I sho‘ did, suh.” “Why did you run?” “I was
scared, suh.” “Why were you scared?” “Mr. Finch, if you was a
nigger like me, you’d be scared, too.” Atticus sat down. Mr.
Gilmer was making his way to the witness stand, but before he got
there Mr. Link Deas rose from the audience and announced: “I just
want the whole lot of you to know one thing right now. That boy’s
worked for me eight years an‘ I ain’t had a speck o’trouble
outa him. Not a speck.” “Shut
your mouth, sir!”
Judge Taylor was wide awake and roaring. He was also pink in the
face. His speech was miraculously unimpaired by his cigar. “Link
Deas,” he yelled, “if you have anything you want to say you can
say it under oath and at the proper time, but until then you get out
of this room, you hear me? Get out of this room, sir, you hear me?
I’ll be damned if I’ll listen to this case again!” Judge Taylor
looked daggers at Atticus, as if daring him to speak, but Atticus had
ducked his head and was laughing into his lap. I remembered something
he had said about Judge Taylor’s ex cathedra remarks sometimes
exceeding his duty, but that few lawyers ever did anything about
them. I looked at Jem, but Jem shook his head. “It ain’t like one
of the jurymen got up and started talking,” he said. “I think
it’d be different then. Mr. Link was just disturbin‘ the peace or
something.” Judge Taylor told the reporter to expunge anything he
happened to have written down after Mr. Finch if you were a nigger
like me you’d be scared too, and told the jury to disregard the
interruption. He looked suspiciously down the middle aisle and
waited, I suppose, for Mr. Link Deas to effect total departure. Then
he said, “Go ahead, Mr. Gilmer.” “You were given thirty days
once for disorderly conduct, Robinson?” asked Mr. Gilmer. “Yes
suh.” “What’d the nigger look like when you got through with
him?” “He beat me, Mr. Gilmer.” “Yes, but you were convicted,
weren’t you?” Atticus raised his head. “It was a misdemeanor
and it’s in the record, Judge.” I thought he sounded tired.
“Witness’ll answer, though,” said Judge Taylor, just as
wearily. “Yes suh, I got thirty days.” I knew that Mr. Gilmer
would sincerely tell the jury that anyone who was convicted of 105

disorderly
conduct could easily have had it in his heart to take advantage of
Mayella Ewell, that was the only reason he cared. Reasons like that
helped. “Robinson, you’re pretty good at busting up chiffarobes
and kindling with one hand, aren’t you?” “Yes, suh, I reckon
so.” “Strong enough to choke the breath out of a woman and sling
her to the floor?” “I never done that, suh.” “But you are
strong enough to?” “I reckon so, suh.” “Had your eye on her a
long time, hadn’t you, boy?” “No suh, I never looked at her.”
“Then you were mighty polite to do all that chopping and hauling
for her, weren’t you, boy?” “I was just tryin‘ to help her
out, suh.” “That was mighty generous of you, you had chores at
home after your regular work, didn’t you?” “Yes suh.” “Why
didn’t you do them instead of Miss Ewell’s?” “I done ‘em
both, suh.” “You must have been pretty busy. Why?” “Why what,
suh?” “Why were you so anxious to do that woman’s chores?”
Tom Robinson hesitated, searching for an answer. “Looked like she
didn’t have nobody to help her, like I says—” “With Mr. Ewell
and seven children on the place, boy?” “Well, I says it looked
like they never help her none—” “You did all this chopping and
work from sheer goodness, boy?” “Tried to help her, I says.”
Mr. Gilmer smiled grimly at the jury. “You’re a mighty good
fellow, it seems—did all this for not one penny?” “Yes, suh. I
felt right sorry for her, she seemed to try more’n the rest of
‘em—” “You felt sorry for her,
you felt sorry
for
he?” Mr. Gilmer seemed ready to rise to the ceiling. The witness
realized his mistake and shifted uncomfortably in the chair. But the
damage was done. Below us, nobody liked Tom Robinson’s answer. Mr.
Gilmer paused a long time to let it sink in. “Now you went by the
house as usual, last November twenty-first,” he said, “and she
asked you to come in and bust up a chiffarobe?” “No suh.” “Do
you deny that you went by the house?” “No suh—she said she had
somethin‘ for me to do inside the house—” “She says she asked
you to bust up a chiffarobe, is that right?” “No suh, it ain’t.”
“Then you say she’s lying, boy?” Atticus was on his feet, but
Tom Robinson didn’t need him. “I don’t say she’s lyin‘, Mr.
Gilmer, I say she’s mistaken in her mind.” To the next ten
questions, as Mr. Gilmer reviewed Mayella’s version of events, the
witness’s steady answer was that she was mistaken in her mind.
“Didn’t Mr. Ewell run you off the place, boy?” “No suh, I
don’t think he did.” “Don’t think, what do you mean?” “I
mean I didn’t stay long enough for him to run me off.” “You’re
very candid about this, why did you run so fast?” “I says I was
scared, suh.” “If you had a clear conscience, why were you
scared?” 106

“Like
I says before, it weren’t safe for any nigger to be in a—fix like
that.” “But you weren’t in a fix—you testified that you were
resisting Miss Ewell. Were you so scared that she’d hurt you, you
ran, a big buck like you?” “No suh, I’s scared I’d be in
court, just like I am now.” “Scared of arrest, scared you’d
have to face up to what you did?” “No suh, scared I’d hafta
face up to what I didn’t do.” “Are you being impudent to me,
boy?” “No suh, I didn’t go to be.” This was as much as I
heard of Mr. Gilmer’s cross-examination, because Jem made me take
Dill out. For some reason Dill had started crying and couldn’t
stop; quietly at first, then his sobs were heard by several people in
the balcony. Jem said if I didn’t go with him he’d make me, and
Reverend Sykes said I’d better go, so I went. Dill had seemed to be
all right that day, nothing wrong with him, but I guessed he hadn’t
fully recovered from running away. “Ain’t you feeling good?” I
asked, when we reached the bottom of the stairs. Dill tried to pull
himself together as we ran down the south steps. Mr. Link Deas was a
lonely figure on the top step. “Anything happenin‘, Scout?” he
asked as we went by. “No sir,” I answered over my shoulder. “Dill
here, he’s sick.” “Come on out under the trees,” I said.
“Heat got you, I expect.” We chose the fattest live oak and we
sat under it. “It was just him I couldn’t stand,” Dill said.
“Who, Tom?” “That old Mr. Gilmer doin‘ him thataway, talking
so hateful to him—” “Dill, that’s his job. Why, if we didn’t
have prosecutors—well, we couldn’t have defense attorneys, I
reckon.” Dill exhaled patiently. “I know all that, Scout. It was
the way he said it made me sick, plain sick.” “He’s supposed to
act that way, Dill, he was cross—” “He didn’t act that way
when—” “Dill, those were his own witnesses.” “Well, Mr.
Finch didn’t act that way to Mayella and old man Ewell when he
cross-examined them. The way that man called him ‘boy’ all the
time an‘ sneered at him, an’ looked around at the jury every time
he answered—” “Well, Dill, after all he’s just a Negro.” “I
don’t care one speck. It ain’t right, somehow it ain’t right to
do ‘em that way. Hasn’t anybody got any business talkin’ like
that—it just makes me sick.” “That’s just Mr. Gilmer’s way,
Dill, he does ‘em all that way. You’ve never seen him get good’n
down on one yet. Why, when—well, today Mr. Gilmer seemed to me like
he wasn’t half trying. They do ’em all that way, most lawyers, I
mean.” “Mr. Finch doesn’t.” “He’s not an example, Dill,
he’s—” I was trying to grope in my memory for a sharp phrase of
Miss Maudie Atkinson’s. I had it: “He’s the same in the
courtroom as he is on the public streets.” “That’s not what I
mean,” said Dill. “I know what you mean, boy,” said a voice
behind us. We thought it came from the tree-trunk, but it belonged to
Mr. Dolphus Raymond. He peered around the trunk at us. “You aren’t
thin-hided, it just makes you sick, doesn’t it?”

Chapter
20

“Come
on round here, son, I got something that’ll settle your stomach.”
As Mr. Dolphus Raymond was an evil man I accepted his invitation
reluctantly, but I followed Dill. Somehow, I didn’t think Atticus
would like it if we became friendly with Mr. Raymond, and I knew Aunt
Alexandra wouldn’t. “Here,” he said, offering Dill his paper
sack with straws in it. “Take a good sip, it’ll 107

quieten
you.” Dill sucked on the straws, smiled, and pulled at length. “Hee
hee,” said Mr. Raymond, evidently taking delight in corrupting a
child. “Dill, you watch out, now,” I warned. Dill released the
straws and grinned. “Scout, it’s nothing but Coca-Cola.” Mr.
Raymond sat up against the tree-trunk. He had been lying on the
grass. “You little folks won’t tell on me now, will you? It’d
ruin my reputation if you did.” “You mean all you drink in that
sack’s Coca-Cola? Just plain Coca-Cola?” “Yes ma’am,” Mr.
Raymond nodded. I liked his smell: it was of leather, horses,
cottonseed. He wore the only English riding boots I had ever seen.
“That’s all I drink, most of the time.” “Then you just
pretend you’re half—? I beg your pardon, sir,” I caught myself.
“I didn’t mean to be—” Mr. Raymond chuckled, not at all
offended, and I tried to frame a discreet question: “Why do you do
like you do?” “Wh—oh yes, you mean why do I pretend? Well, it’s
very simple,” he said. “Some folks don’t—like the way I live.
Now I could say the hell with ‘em, I don’t care if they don’t
like it. I do say I don’t care if they don’t like it, right
enough—but I don’t say the hell with ’em, see?” Dill and I
said, “No sir.” “I try to give ‘em a reason, you see. It
helps folks if they can latch onto a reason. When I come to town,
which is seldom, if I weave a little and drink out of this sack,
folks can say Dolphus Raymond’s in the clutches of whiskey—that’s
why he won’t change his ways. He can’t help himself, that’s why
he lives the way he does.” “That ain’t honest, Mr. Raymond,
making yourself out badder’n you are already—” “It ain’t
honest but it’s mighty helpful to folks. Secretly, Miss Finch, I’m
not much of a drinker, but you see they could never, never understand
that I live like I do because that’s the way I want to live.” I
had a feeling that I shouldn’t be here listening to this sinful man
who had mixed children and didn’t care who knew it, but he was
fascinating. I had never encountered a being who deliberately
perpetrated fraud against himself. But why had he entrusted us with
his deepest secret? I asked him why. “Because you’re children and
you can understand it,” he said, “and because I heard that one—”
He jerked his head at Dill: “Things haven’t caught up with that
one’s instinct yet. Let him get a little older and he won’t get
sick and cry. Maybe things’ll strike him as being—not quite
right, say, but he won’t cry, not when he gets a few years on him.”
“Cry about what, Mr. Raymond?” Dill’s maleness was beginning to
assert itself. “Cry about the simple hell people give other
people—without even thinking. Cry about the hell white people give
colored folks, without even stopping to think that they’re people,
too.” “Atticus says cheatin‘ a colored man is ten times worse
than cheatin’ a white man,” I muttered. “Says it’s the worst
thing you can do.” Mr. Raymond said, “I don’t reckon it’s—Miss
Jean Louise, you don’t know your pa’s not a run-of-the-mill man,
it’ll take a few years for that to sink in—you haven’t seen
enough of the world yet. You haven’t even seen this town, but all
you gotta do is step back inside the courthouse.” Which reminded me
that we were missing nearly all of Mr. Gilmer’s cross-examination.
I looked at the sun, and it was dropping fast behind the store-tops
on the west side of the square. Between two fires, I could not decide
which I wanted to jump into: Mr. Raymond or the 5th Judicial Circuit
Court. “C’mon, Dill,” I said. “You all right, now?” “Yeah.
Glad t’ve metcha, Mr. Raymond, and thanks for the drink, it was
mighty settlin‘.” We raced back to the courthouse, up the steps,
up two flights of stairs, and edged our way along the balcony rail.
Reverend Sykes had saved our seats. 108

The
courtroom was still, and again I wondered where the babies were.
Judge Taylor’s cigar was a brown speck in the center of his mouth;
Mr. Gilmer was writing on one of the yellow pads on his table, trying
to outdo the court reporter, whose hand was jerking rapidly. “Shoot,”
I muttered, “we missed it.” Atticus was halfway through his
speech to the jury. He had evidently pulled some papers from his
briefcase that rested beside his chair, because they were on his
table. Tom Robinson was toying with them. “…absence of any
corroborative evidence, this man was indicted on a capital charge and
is now on trial for his life…” I punched Jem. “How long’s he
been at it?” “He’s just gone over the evidence,” Jem
whispered, “and we’re gonna win, Scout. I don’t see how we
can’t. He’s been at it ‘bout five minutes. He made it as plain
and easy as—well, as I’da explained it to you. You could’ve
understood it, even.” “Did Mr. Gilmer—?” “Sh-h. Nothing
new, just the usual. Hush now.” We looked down again. Atticus was
speaking easily, with the kind of detachment he used when he dictated
a letter. He walked slowly up and down in front of the jury, and the
jury seemed to be attentive: their heads were up, and they followed
Atticus’s route with what seemed to be appreciation. I guess it was
because Atticus wasn’t a thunderer. Atticus paused, then he did
something he didn’t ordinarily do. He unhitched his watch and chain
and placed them on the table, saying, “With the court’s
permission—” Judge Taylor nodded, and then Atticus did something
I never saw him do before or since, in public or in private: he
unbuttoned his vest, unbuttoned his collar, loosened his tie, and
took off his coat. He never loosened a scrap of his clothing until he
undressed at bedtime, and to Jem and me, this was the equivalent of
him standing before us stark naked. We exchanged horrified glances.
Atticus put his hands in his pockets, and as he returned to the jury,
I saw his gold collar button and the tips of his pen and pencil
winking in the light. “Gentlemen,” he said. Jem and I again
looked at each other: Atticus might have said, “Scout.” His voice
had lost its aridity, its detachment, and he was talking to the jury
as if they were folks on the post office corner. “Gentlemen,” he
was saying, “I shall be brief, but I would like to use my remaining
time with you to remind you that this case is not a difficult one, it
requires no minute sifting of complicated facts, but it does require
you to be sure beyond all reasonable doubt as to the guilt of the
defendant. To begin with, this case should never have come to trial.
This case is as simple as black and white. “The state has not
produced one iota of medical evidence to the effect that the crime
Tom Robinson is charged with ever took place. It has relied instead
upon the testimony of two witnesses whose evidence has not only been
called into serious question on cross-examination, but has been
flatly contradicted by the defendant. The defendant is not guilty,
but somebody in this courtroom is. “I have nothing but pity in my
heart for the chief witness for the state, but my pity does not
extend so far as to her putting a man’s life at stake, which she
has done in an effort to get rid of her own guilt. “I say guilt,
gentlemen, because it was guilt that motivated her. She has committed
no crime, she has merely broken a rigid and time-honored code of our
society, a code so severe that whoever breaks it is hounded from our
midst as unfit to live with. She is the victim of cruel poverty and
ignorance, but I cannot pity her: she is white. She knew full well
the enormity of her offense, but because her desires were stronger
than the code she was breaking, she persisted in breaking it. She
persisted, and her subsequent reaction is something that all of us
have known at one time or another. She did something every child has
done—she tried to put the evidence of her offense away from her.
But in this case she was no child hiding stolen contraband: she
struck out at her victim—of necessity she must put him away from
her—he must be removed from her presence, from this world. She must
destroy the evidence of her offense. 109

“What
was the evidence of her offense? Tom Robinson, a human being. She
must put Tom Robinson away from her. Tom Robinson was her daily
reminder of what she did. What did she do? She tempted a Negro. “She
was white, and she tempted a Negro. She did something that in our
society is unspeakable: she kissed a black man. Not an old Uncle, but
a strong young Negro man. No code mattered to her before she broke
it, but it came crashing down on her afterwards. “Her father saw
it, and the defendant has testified as to his remarks. What did her
father do? We don’t know, but there is circumstantial evidence to
indicate that Mayella Ewell was beaten savagely by someone who led
almost exclusively with his left. We do know in part what Mr. Ewell
did: he did what any God-fearing, persevering, respectable white man
would do under the circumstances—he swore out a warrant, no doubt
signing it with his left hand, and Tom Robinson now sits before you,
having taken the oath with the only good hand he possesses—his
right hand. “And so a quiet, respectable, humble Negro who had the
unmitigated temerity to ‘feel sorry’ for a white woman has had to
put his word against two white people’s. I need not remind you of
their appearance and conduct on the stand—you saw them for
yourselves. The witnesses for the state, with the exception of the
sheriff of Maycomb County, have presented themselves to you
gentlemen, to this court, in the cynical confidence that their
testimony would not be doubted, confident that you gentlemen would go
along with them on the assumption—the evil assumption—that all
Negroes
lie, that all
Negroes
are basically immoral beings, that all
Negro
men are not to be trusted around our women, an assumption one
associates with minds of their caliber. “Which, gentlemen, we know
is in itself a lie as black as Tom Robinson’s skin, a lie I do not
have to point out to you. You know the truth, and the truth is this:
some Negroes lie, some Negroes are immoral, some Negro men are not to
be trusted around women—black or white. But this is a truth that
applies to the human race and to no particular race of men. There is
not a person in this courtroom who has never told a lie, who has
never done an immoral thing, and there is no man living who has never
looked upon a woman without desire.” Atticus paused and took out
his handkerchief. Then he took off his glasses and wiped them, and we
saw another “first”: we had never seen him sweat—he was one of
those men whose faces never perspired, but now it was shining tan.
“One more thing, gentlemen, before I quit. Thomas Jefferson once
said that all men are created equal, a phrase that the Yankees and
the distaff side of the Executive branch in Washington are fond of
hurling at us. There is a tendency in this year of grace, 1935, for
certain people to use this phrase out of context, to satisfy all
conditions. The most ridiculous example I can think of is that the
people who run public education promote the stupid and idle along
with the industrious—because all men are created equal, educators
will gravely tell you, the children left behind suffer terrible
feelings of inferiority. We know all men are not created equal in the
sense some people would have us believe—some people are smarter
than others, some people have more opportunity because they’re born
with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make
better cakes than others—some people are born gifted beyond the
normal scope of most men. “But there is one way in this country in
which all men are created equal—there is one human institution that
makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal
of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college
president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the
Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. court in the
land, or this honorable court which you serve. Our courts have their
faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts
are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal.
“I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts
and in the jury system—that is no ideal to me, it is a living,
working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you
sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury,
and a 110

jury
is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you
gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard,
come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the
name of God, do your duty.” Atticus’s voice had dropped, and as
he turned away from the jury he said something I did not catch. He
said it more to himself than to the court. I punched Jem. “What’d
he say?” “‘In the name of God, believe him,’ I think that’s
what he said.” Dill suddenly reached over me and tugged at Jem.
“Looka yonder!” We followed his finger with sinking hearts.
Calpurnia was making her way up the middle aisle, walking straight
toward Atticus.

Chapter
21

She
stopped shyly at the railing and waited to get Judge Taylor’s
attention. She was in a fresh apron and she carried an envelope in
her hand. Judge Taylor saw her and said, “It’s Calpurnia, isn’t
it?” “Yes sir,” she said. “Could I just pass this note to Mr.
Finch, please sir? It hasn’t got anything to do with—with the
trial.” Judge Taylor nodded and Atticus took the envelope from
Calpurnia. He opened it, read its contents and said, “Judge, I—this
note is from my sister. She says my children are missing, haven’t
turned up since noon… I… could you—” “I know where they
are, Atticus.” Mr. Underwood spoke up. “They’re right up yonder
in the colored balcony—been there since precisely one-eighteen
P.M.” Our father turned around and looked up. “Jem, come down
from there,” he called. Then he said something to the Judge we
didn’t hear. We climbed across Reverend Sykes and made our way to
the staircase. Atticus and Calpurnia met us downstairs. Calpurnia
looked peeved, but Atticus looked exhausted. Jem was jumping in
excitement. “We’ve won, haven’t we?” “I’ve no idea,”
said Atticus shortly. “You’ve been here all afternoon? Go home
with Calpurnia and get your supper—and stay home.” “Aw,
Atticus, let us come back,” pleaded Jem. “Please let us hear the
verdict, please
sir.”
“The jury might be out and back in a minute, we don’t know—”
but we could tell Atticus was relenting. “Well, you’ve heard it
all, so you might as well hear the rest. Tell you what, you all can
come back when you’ve eaten your supper—eat slowly, now, you
won’t miss anything important—and if the jury’s still out, you
can wait with us. But I expect it’ll be over before you get back.”
“You think they’ll acquit him that fast?” asked Jem. Atticus
opened his mouth to answer, but shut it and left us. I prayed that
Reverend Sykes would save our seats for us, but stopped praying when
I remembered that people got up and left in droves when the jury was
out—tonight, they’d overrun the drugstore, the O.K. Café and the
hotel, that is, unless they had brought their suppers too. Calpurnia
marched us home: “—skin every one of you alive, the very idea,
you children listenin‘ to all that! Mister Jem, don’t you know
better’n to take your little sister to that trial? Miss
Alexandra’ll absolutely have a stroke of paralysis when she finds
out! Ain’t fittin’ for children to hear…” The streetlights
were on, and we glimpsed Calpurnia’s indignant profile as we passed
beneath them. “Mister Jem, I thought you was gettin‘ some kinda
head on your shoulders—the very idea, she’s your little sister!
The very idea,
sir! You oughta be perfectly ashamed of yourself—ain’t you got
any sense at all?” I was exhilarated. So many things had happened
so fast I felt it would take years to sort them out, and now here was
Calpurnia giving her precious Jem down the country—what new marvels
would the evening bring? 111

Jem
was chuckling. “Don’t you want to hear about it, Cal?” “Hush
your mouth, sir! When you oughta be hangin‘ your head in shame you
go along laughin’—” Calpurnia revived a series of rusty threats
that moved Jem to little remorse, and she sailed up the front steps
with her classic, “If Mr. Finch don’t wear you out, I will—get
in that house, sir!” Jem went in grinning, and Calpurnia nodded
tacit consent to having Dill in to supper. “You all call Miss
Rachel right now and tell her where you are,” she told him. “She’s
run distracted lookin‘ for you—you watch out she don’t ship you
back to Meridian first thing in the mornin’.” Aunt Alexandra met
us and nearly fainted when Calpurnia told her where we were. I guess
it hurt her when we told her Atticus said we could go back, because
she didn’t say a word during supper. She just rearranged food on
her plate, looking at it sadly while Calpurnia served Jem, Dill and
me with a vengeance. Calpurnia poured milk, dished out potato salad
and ham, muttering, “‘shamed of yourselves,” in varying degrees
of intensity. “Now you all eat slow,” was her final command.
Reverend Sykes had saved our places. We were surprised to find that
we had been gone nearly an hour, and were equally surprised to find
the courtroom exactly as we had left it, with minor changes: the jury
box was empty, the defendant was gone; Judge Taylor had been gone,
but he reappeared as we were seating ourselves. “Nobody’s moved,
hardly,” said Jem. “They moved around some when the jury went
out,” said Reverend Sykes. “The menfolk down there got the
womenfolk their suppers, and they fed their babies.” “How long
have they been out?” asked Jem. “‘bout thirty minutes. Mr.
Finch and Mr. Gilmer did some more talkin’, and Judge Taylor
charged the jury.” “How was he?” asked Jem. “What say? Oh, he
did right well. I ain’t complainin‘ one bit—he was mighty
fair-minded. He sorta said if you believe this, then you’ll have to
return one verdict, but if you believe this, you’ll have to return
another one. I thought he was leanin’ a little to our side—”
Reverend Sykes scratched his head. Jem smiled. “He’s not supposed
to lean, Reverend, but don’t fret, we’ve won it,” he said
wisely. “Don’t see how any jury could convict on what we heard—”
“Now don’t you be so confident, Mr. Jem, I ain’t ever seen any
jury decide in favor of a colored man over a white man…” But Jem
took exception to Reverend Sykes, and we were subjected to a lengthy
review of the evidence with Jem’s ideas on the law regarding rape:
it wasn’t rape if she let you, but she had to be eighteen—in
Alabama, that is—and Mayella was nineteen. Apparently you had to
kick and holler, you had to be overpowered and stomped on, preferably
knocked stone cold. If you were under eighteen, you didn’t have to
go through all this. “Mr. Jem,” Reverend Sykes demurred, “this
ain’t a polite thing for little ladies to hear…” “Aw, she
doesn’t know what we’re talkin‘ about,” said Jem. “Scout,
this is too old for you, ain’t it?” “It most certainly is not,
I know every word you’re saying.” Perhaps I was too convincing,
because Jem hushed and never discussed the subject again. “What
time is it, Reverend?” he asked. “Gettin‘ on toward eight.” I
looked down and saw Atticus strolling around with his hands in his
pockets: he made a tour of the windows, then walked by the railing
over to the jury box. He looked in it, inspected Judge Taylor on his
throne, then went back to where he started. I caught his eye and
waved to him. He acknowledged my salute with a nod, and resumed his
tour. Mr. Gilmer was standing at the windows talking to Mr.
Underwood. Bert, the court reporter, was chain-smoking: he sat back
with his feet on the table. But the officers of the court, the ones
present—Atticus, Mr. Gilmer, Judge Taylor sound asleep, and Bert,
were the only ones whose behavior seemed normal. I had 112

never
seen a packed courtroom so still. Sometimes a baby would cry out
fretfully, and a child would scurry out, but the grown people sat as
if they were in church. In the balcony, the Negroes sat and stood
around us with biblical patience. The old courthouse clock suffered
its preliminary strain and struck the hour, eight deafening bongs
that shook our bones. When it bonged eleven times I was past feeling:
tired from fighting sleep, I allowed myself a short nap against
Reverend Sykes’s comfortable arm and shoulder. I jerked awake and
made an honest effort to remain so, by looking down and concentrating
on the heads below: there were sixteen bald ones, fourteen men that
could pass for redheads, forty heads varying between brown and black,
and—I remembered something Jem had once explained to me when he
went through a brief period of psychical research: he said if enough
people—a stadium full, maybe—were to concentrate on one thing,
such as setting a tree afire in the woods, that the tree would ignite
of its own accord. I toyed with the idea of asking everyone below to
concentrate on setting Tom Robinson free, but thought if they were as
tired as I, it wouldn’t work. Dill was sound asleep, his head on
Jem’s shoulder, and Jem was quiet. “Ain’t it a long time?” I
asked him. “Sure is, Scout,” he said happily. “Well, from the
way you put it, it’d just take five minutes.” Jem raised his
eyebrows. “There are things you don’t understand,” he said, and
I was too weary to argue. But I must have been reasonably awake, or I
would not have received the impression that was creeping into me. It
was not unlike one I had last winter, and I shivered, though the
night was hot. The feeling grew until the atmosphere in the courtroom
was exactly the same as a cold February morning, when the
mockingbirds were still, and the carpenters had stopped hammering on
Miss Maudie’s new house, and every wood door in the neighborhood
was shut as tight as the doors of the Radley Place. A deserted,
waiting, empty street, and the courtroom was packed with people. A
steaming summer night was no different from a winter morning. Mr.
Heck Tate, who had entered the courtroom and was talking to Atticus,
might have been wearing his high boots and lumber jacket. Atticus had
stopped his tranquil journey and had put his foot onto the bottom
rung of a chair; as he listened to what Mr. Tate was saying, he ran
his hand slowly up and down his thigh. I expected Mr. Tate to say any
minute, “Take him, Mr. Finch…” But Mr. Tate said, “This court
will come to order,” in a voice that rang with authority, and the
heads below us jerked up. Mr. Tate left the room and returned with
Tom Robinson. He steered Tom to his place beside Atticus, and stood
there. Judge Taylor had roused himself to sudden alertness and was
sitting up straight, looking at the empty jury box. What happened
after that had a dreamlike quality: in a dream I saw the jury return,
moving like underwater swimmers, and Judge Taylor’s voice came from
far away and was tiny. I saw something only a lawyer’s child could
be expected to see, could be expected to watch for, and it was like
watching Atticus walk into the street, raise a rifle to his shoulder
and pull the trigger, but watching all the time knowing that the gun
was empty. A jury never looks at a defendant it has convicted, and
when this jury came in, not one of them looked at Tom Robinson. The
foreman handed a piece of paper to Mr. Tate who handed it to the
clerk who handed it to the judge… I shut my eyes. Judge Taylor was
polling the jury: “Guilty… guilty… guilty… guilty…” I
peeked at Jem: his hands were white from gripping the balcony rail,
and his shoulders jerked as if each “guilty” was a separate stab
between them. Judge Taylor was saying something. His gavel was in his
fist, but he wasn’t using it. Dimly, I saw Atticus pushing papers
from the table into his briefcase. He snapped it shut, went to the
court reporter and said something, nodded to Mr. Gilmer, and then
went to Tom Robinson and whispered something to him. Atticus put his
hand on Tom’s 113

shoulder
as he whispered. Atticus took his coat off the back of his chair and
pulled it over his shoulder. Then he left the courtroom, but not by
his usual exit. He must have wanted to go home the short way, because
he walked quickly down the middle aisle toward the south exit. I
followed the top of his head as he made his way to the door. He did
not look up. Someone was punching me, but I was reluctant to take my
eyes from the people below us, and from the image of Atticus’s
lonely walk down the aisle. “Miss Jean Louise?” I looked around.
They were standing. All around us and in the balcony on the opposite
wall, the Negroes were getting to their feet. Reverend Sykes’s
voice was as distant as Judge Taylor’s: “Miss Jean Louise, stand
up. Your father’s passin’.”

Chapter
22

It
was Jem’s turn to cry. His face was streaked with angry tears as we
made our way through the cheerful crowd. “It ain’t right,” he
muttered, all the way to the corner of the square where we found
Atticus waiting. Atticus was standing under the street light looking
as though nothing had happened: his vest was buttoned, his collar and
tie were neatly in place, his watch-chain glistened, he was his
impassive self again. “It ain’t right, Atticus,” said Jem. “No
son, it’s not right.” We walked home. Aunt Alexandra was waiting
up. She was in her dressing gown, and I could have sworn she had on
her corset underneath it. “I’m sorry, brother,” she murmured.
Having never heard her call Atticus “brother” before, I stole a
glance at Jem, but he was not listening. He would look up at Atticus,
then down at the floor, and I wondered if he thought Atticus somehow
responsible for Tom Robinson’s conviction. “Is he all right?”
Aunty asked, indicating Jem. “He’ll be so presently,” said
Atticus. “It was a little too strong for him.” Our father sighed.
“I’m going to bed,” he said. “If I don’t wake up in the
morning, don’t call me.” “I didn’t think it wise in the first
place to let them—” “This is their home, sister,” said
Atticus. “We’ve made it this way for them, they might as well
learn to cope with it.” “But they don’t have to go to the
courthouse and wallow in it—” “It’s just as much Maycomb
County as missionary teas.” “Atticus—” Aunt Alexandra’s
eyes were anxious. “You are the last person I thought would turn
bitter over this.” “I’m not bitter, just tired. I’m going to
bed.” “Atticus—” said Jem bleakly. He turned in the doorway.
“What, son?” “How could they do it, how could they?” “I
don’t know, but they did it. They’ve done it before and they did
it tonight and they’ll do it again and when they do it—seems that
only children weep. Good night.” But things are always better in
the morning. Atticus rose at his usual ungodly hour and was in the
livingroom behind the Mobile
Register when
we stumbled in. Jem’s morning face posed the question his sleepy
lips struggled to ask. “It’s not time to worry yet,” Atticus
reassured him, as we went to the diningroom. “We’re not through
yet. There’ll be an appeal, you can count on that. Gracious alive,
Cal, what’s all this?” He was staring at his breakfast plate.
Calpurnia said, “Tom Robinson’s daddy sent you along this chicken
this morning. I fixed it.” “You tell him I’m proud to get
it—bet they don’t have chicken for breakfast at the White House.
What are these?” “Rolls,” said Calpurnia. “Estelle down at
the hotel sent ‘em.” 114

Atticus
looked up at her, puzzled, and she said, “You better step out here
and see what’s in the kitchen, Mr. Finch.” We followed him. The
kitchen table was loaded with enough food to bury the family: hunks
of salt pork, tomatoes, beans, even scuppernongs. Atticus grinned
when he found a jar of pickled pigs’ knuckles. “Reckon Aunty’ll
let me eat these in the diningroom?” Calpurnia said, “This was
all ‘round the back steps when I got here this morning. They—they
’preciate what you did, Mr. Finch. They—they aren’t
oversteppin‘ themselves, are they?” Atticus’s eyes filled with
tears. He did not speak for a moment. “Tell them I’m very
grateful,” he said. “Tell them—tell them they must never do
this again. Times are too hard…” He left the kitchen, went in the
diningroom and excused himself to Aunt Alexandra, put on his hat and
went to town. We heard Dill’s step in the hall, so Calpurnia left
Atticus’s uneaten breakfast on the table. Between rabbit-bites Dill
told us of Miss Rachel’s reaction to last night, which was: if a
man like Atticus Finch wants to butt his head against a stone wall
it’s his head. “I’da got her told,” growled Dill, gnawing a
chicken leg, “but she didn’t look much like tellin‘ this
morning. Said she was up half the night wonderin’ where I was, said
she’da had the sheriff after me but he was at the hearing.”
“Dill, you’ve got to stop goin‘ off without tellin’ her,”
said Jem. “It just aggravates her.” Dill sighed patiently. “I
told her till I was blue in the face where I was goin‘—she’s
just seein’ too many snakes in the closet. Bet that woman drinks a
pint for breakfast every morning—know she drinks two glasses full.
Seen her.” “Don’t talk like that, Dill,” said Aunt Alexandra.
“It’s not becoming to a child. It’s—cynical.” “I ain’t
cynical, Miss Alexandra. Tellin‘ the truth’s not cynical, is it?”
“The way you tell it, it is.” Jem’s eyes flashed at her, but he
said to Dill, “Let’s go. You can take that runner with you.”
When we went to the front porch, Miss Stephanie Crawford was busy
telling it to Miss Maudie Atkinson and Mr. Avery. They looked around
at us and went on talking. Jem made a feral noise in his throat. I
wished for a weapon. “I hate grown folks lookin‘ at you,” said
Dill. “Makes you feel like you’ve done something.” Miss Maudie
yelled for Jem Finch to come there. Jem groaned and heaved himself up
from the swing. “We’ll go with you,” Dill said. Miss
Stephanie’s nose quivered with curiosity. She wanted to know who
all gave us permission to go to court—she didn’t see us but it
was all over town this morning that we were in the Colored balcony.
Did Atticus put us up there as a sort of—? Wasn’t it right close
up there with all those—? Did Scout understand all the—? Didn’t
it make us mad to see our daddy beat? “Hush, Stephanie.” Miss
Maudie’s diction was deadly. “I’ve not got all the morning to
pass on the porch—Jem Finch, I called to find out if you and your
colleagues can eat some cake. Got up at five to make it, so you
better say yes. Excuse us, Stephanie. Good morning, Mr. Avery.”
There was a big cake and two little ones on Miss Maudie’s kitchen
table. There should have been three little ones. It was not like Miss
Maudie to forget Dill, and we must have shown it. But we understood
when she cut from the big cake and gave the slice to Jem. As we ate,
we sensed that this was Miss Maudie’s way of saying that as far as
she was concerned, nothing had changed. She sat quietly in a kitchen
chair, watching us. Suddenly she spoke: “Don’t fret, Jem. Things
are never as bad as they seem.” Indoors, when Miss Maudie wanted to
say something lengthy she spread her fingers on her knees and settled
her bridgework. This she did, and we waited. “I simply want to tell
you that there are some men in this world who were born to do our
unpleasant jobs for us. Your father’s one of them.” 115

“Oh,”
said Jem. “Well.” “Don’t you oh well me, sir,” Miss Maudie
replied, recognizing Jem’s fatalistic noises, “you are not old
enough to appreciate what I said.” Jem was staring at his
half-eaten cake. “It’s like bein‘ a caterpillar in a cocoon,
that’s what it is,” he said. “Like somethin’ asleep wrapped
up in a warm place. I always thought Maycomb folks were the best
folks in the world, least that’s what they seemed like.” “We’re
the safest folks in the world,” said Miss Maudie. “We’re so
rarely called on to be Christians, but when we are, we’ve got men
like Atticus to go for us.” Jem grinned ruefully. “Wish the rest
of the county thought that.” “You’d be surprised how many of us
do.” “Who?” Jem’s voice rose. “Who in this town did one
thing to help Tom Robinson, just who?” “His colored friends for
one thing, and people like us. People like Judge Taylor. People like
Mr. Heck Tate. Stop eating and start thinking, Jem. Did it ever
strike you that Judge Taylor naming Atticus to defend that boy was no
accident? That Judge Taylor might have had his reasons for naming
him?” This was a thought. Court-appointed defenses were usually
given to Maxwell Green, Maycomb’s latest addition to the bar, who
needed the experience. Maxwell Green should have had Tom Robinson’s
case. “You think about that,” Miss Maudie was saying. “It was
no accident. I was sittin‘ there on the porch last night, waiting.
I waited and waited to see you all come down the sidewalk, and as I
waited I thought, Atticus Finch won’t win, he can’t win, but he’s
the only man in these parts who can keep a jury out so long in a case
like that. And I thought to myself, well, we’re making a step—it’s
just a baby-step, but it’s a step.” “‘t’s all right to talk
like that—can’t any Christian judges an’ lawyers make up for
heathen juries,” Jem muttered. “Soon’s I get grown—”
“That’s something you’ll have to take up with your father,”
Miss Maudie said. We went down Miss Maudie’s cool new steps into
the sunshine and found Mr. Avery and Miss Stephanie Crawford still at
it. They had moved down the sidewalk and were standing in front of
Miss Stephanie’s house. Miss Rachel was walking toward them. “I
think I’ll be a clown when I get grown,” said Dill. Jem and I
stopped in our tracks. “Yes sir, a clown,” he said. “There
ain’t one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh, so
I’m gonna join the circus and laugh my head off.” “You got it
backwards, Dill,” said Jem. “Clowns are sad, it’s folks that
laugh at them.” “Well I’m gonna be a new kind of clown. I’m
gonna stand in the middle of the ring and laugh at the folks. Just
looka yonder,” he pointed. “Every one of ‘em oughta be ridin’
broomsticks. Aunt Rachel already does.” Miss Stephanie and Miss
Rachel were waving wildly at us, in a way that did not give the lie
to Dill’s observation. “Oh gosh,” breathed Jem. “I reckon
it’d be ugly not to see ‘em.” Something was wrong. Mr. Avery
was red in the face from a sneezing spell and nearly blew us off the
sidewalk when we came up. Miss Stephanie was trembling with
excitement, and Miss Rachel caught Dill’s shoulder. “You get on
in the back yard and stay there,” she said. “There’s danger
a’comin‘.” “‘s matter?” I asked. “Ain’t you heard
yet? It’s all over town—” At that moment Aunt Alexandra came to
the door and called us, but she was too late. It was Miss Stephanie’s
pleasure to tell us: this morning Mr. Bob Ewell stopped Atticus on
the post office corner, spat in his face, and told him he’d get him
if it took the rest of his life. 116

Chapter
23

“I
wish Bob Ewell wouldn’t chew tobacco,” was all Atticus said about
it. According to Miss Stephanie Crawford, however, Atticus was
leaving the post office when Mr. Ewell approached him, cursed him,
spat on him, and threatened to kill him. Miss Stephanie (who, by the
time she had told it twice was there and had seen it all—passing by
from the Jitney Jungle, she was)—Miss Stephanie said Atticus didn’t
bat an eye, just took out his handkerchief and wiped his face and
stood there and let Mr. Ewell call him names wild horses could not
bring her to repeat. Mr. Ewell was a veteran of an obscure war; that
plus Atticus’s peaceful reaction probably prompted him to inquire,
“Too proud to fight, you nigger-lovin‘ bastard?” Miss Stephanie
said Atticus said, “No, too old,” put his hands in his pockets
and strolled on. Miss Stephanie said you had to hand it to Atticus
Finch, he could be right dry sometimes. Jem and I didn’t think it
entertaining. “After all, though,” I said, “he was the deadest
shot in the county one time. He could—” “You know he wouldn’t
carry a gun, Scout. He ain’t even got one—” said Jem. “You
know he didn’t even have one down at the jail that night. He told
me havin‘ a gun around’s an invitation to somebody to shoot you.”
“This is different,” I said. “We can ask him to borrow one.”
We did, and he said, “Nonsense.” Dill was of the opinion that an
appeal to Atticus’s better nature might work: after all, we would
starve if Mr. Ewell killed him, besides be raised exclusively by Aunt
Alexandra, and we all knew the first thing she’d do before Atticus
was under the ground good would be to fire Calpurnia. Jem said it
might work if I cried and flung a fit, being young and a girl. That
didn’t work either. But when he noticed us dragging around the
neighborhood, not eating, taking little interest in our normal
pursuits, Atticus discovered how deeply frightened we were. He
tempted Jem with a new football magazine one night; when he saw Jem
flip the pages and toss it aside, he said, “What’s bothering you,
son?” Jem came to the point: “Mr. Ewell.” “What has
happened?” “Nothing’s happened. We’re scared for you, and we
think you oughta do something about him.” Atticus smiled wryly. “Do
what? Put him under a peace bond?” “When a man says he’s gonna
get you, looks like he means it.” “He meant it when he said it,”
said Atticus. “Jem, see if you can stand in Bob Ewell’s shoes a
minute. I destroyed his last shred of credibility at that trial, if
he had any to begin with. The man had to have some kind of comeback,
his kind always does. So if spitting in my face and threatening me
saved Mayella Ewell one extra beating, that’s something I’ll
gladly take. He had to take it out on somebody and I’d rather it be
me than that houseful of children out there. You understand?” Jem
nodded. Aunt Alexandra entered the room as Atticus was saying, “We
don’t have anything to fear from Bob Ewell, he got it all out of
his system that morning.” “I wouldn’t be so sure of that,
Atticus,” she said. “His kind’d do anything to pay off a
grudge. You know how those people are.” “What on earth could
Ewell do to me, sister?” “Something furtive,” Aunt Alexandra
said. “You may count on that.” “Nobody has much chance to be
furtive in Maycomb,” Atticus answered. After that, we were not
afraid. Summer was melting away, and we made the most of it. Atticus
assured us that nothing would happen to Tom Robinson until the higher
court reviewed his case, and that Tom had a good chance of going
free, or at least of having a new trial. He was at Enfield Prison
Farm, seventy miles away in Chester County. I asked Atticus if Tom’s
wife and children were allowed to visit him, but Atticus said no. “If
he loses his appeal,” I asked one evening, “what’ll happen to
him?” “He’ll go to the chair,” said Atticus, “unless the
Governor commutes his sentence. Not 117

time
to worry yet, Scout. We’ve got a good chance.” Jem was sprawled
on the sofa reading Popular
Mechanics.
He looked up. “It ain’t right. He didn’t kill anybody even if
he was guilty. He didn’t take anybody’s life.” “You know
rape’s a capital offense in Alabama,” said Atticus. “Yessir,
but the jury didn’t have to give him death—if they wanted to they
could’ve gave him twenty years.” “Given,” said Atticus. “Tom
Robinson’s a colored man, Jem. No jury in this part of the world’s
going to say, ‘We think you’re guilty, but not very,’ on a
charge like that. It was either a straight acquittal or nothing.”
Jem was shaking his head. “I know it’s not right, but I can’t
figure out what’s wrong—maybe rape shouldn’t be a capital
offense…” Atticus dropped his newspaper beside his chair. He said
he didn’t have any quarrel with the rape statute, none what ever,
but he did have deep misgivings when the state asked for and the jury
gave a death penalty on purely circumstantial evidence. He glanced at
me, saw I was listening, and made it easier. “—I mean, before a
man is sentenced to death for murder, say, there should be one or two
eye-witnesses. Some one should be able to say, ‘Yes, I was there
and saw him pull the trigger.’” “But lots of folks have been
hung—hanged—on circumstantial evidence,” said Jem. “I know,
and lots of ‘em probably deserved it, too—but in the absence of
eye-witnesses there’s always a doubt, some times only the shadow of
a doubt. The law says ’reasonable doubt,‘ but I think a
defendant’s entitled to the shadow of a doubt. There’s always the
possibility, no matter how improbable, that he’s innocent.” “Then
it all goes back to the jury, then. We oughta do away with juries.”
Jem was adamant. Atticus tried hard not to smile but couldn’t help
it. “You’re rather hard on us, son. I think maybe there might be
a better way. Change the law. Change it so that only judges have the
power of fixing the penalty in capital cases.” “Then go up to
Montgomery and change the law.” “You’d be surprised how hard
that’d be. I won’t live to see the law changed, and if you live
to see it you’ll be an old man.” This was not good enough for
Jem. “No sir, they oughta do away with juries. He wasn’t guilty
in the first place and they said he was.” “If you had been on
that jury, son, and eleven other boys like you, Tom would be a free
man,” said Atticus. “So far nothing in your life has interfered
with your reasoning process. Those are twelve reasonable men in
everyday life, Tom’s jury, but you saw something come between them
and reason. You saw the same thing that night in front of the jail.
When that crew went away, they didn’t go as reasonable men, they
went because we were there. There’s something in our world that
makes men lose their heads—they couldn’t be fair if they tried.
In our courts, when it’s a white man’s word against a black
man’s, the white man always wins. They’re ugly, but those are the
facts of life.” “Doesn’t make it right,” said Jem stolidly.
He beat his fist softly on his knee. “You just can’t convict a
man on evidence like that—you can’t.” “You couldn’t, but
they could and did. The older you grow the more of it you’ll see.
The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a
courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of
carrying their resentments right into a jury box. As you grow older,
you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but
let me tell you something and don’t you forget it—whenever a
white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he
is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.”
Atticus was speaking so quietly his last word crashed on our ears. I
looked up, and his face was vehement. “There’s nothing more
sickening to me than a low-grade white man who’ll take advantage of
a Negro’s ignorance. Don’t fool yourselves—it’s all adding up
and one of these days we’re going to pay the bill for it. I hope
it’s not in you children’s time.” 118

Jem
was scratching his head. Suddenly his eyes widened. “Atticus,” he
said, “why don’t people like us and Miss Maudie ever sit on
juries? You never see anybody from Maycomb on a jury—they all come
from out in the woods.” Atticus leaned back in his rocking-chair.
For some reason he looked pleased with Jem. “I was wondering when
that’d occur to you,” he said. “There are lots of reasons. For
one thing, Miss Maudie can’t serve on a jury because she’s a
woman—” “You mean women in Alabama can’t—?” I was
indignant. “I do. I guess it’s to protect our frail ladies from
sordid cases like Tom’s. Besides,” Atticus grinned, “I doubt if
we’d ever get a complete case tried—the ladies’d be
interrupting to ask questions.” Jem and I laughed. Miss Maudie on a
jury would be impressive. I thought of old Mrs. Dubose in her
wheelchair—“Stop that rapping, John Taylor, I want to ask this
man something.” Perhaps our forefathers were wise. Atticus was
saying, “With people like us—that’s our share of the bill. We
generally get the juries we deserve. Our stout Maycomb citizens
aren’t interested, in the first place. In the second place, they’re
afraid. Then, they’re—” “Afraid, why?” asked Jem. “Well,
what if—say, Mr. Link Deas had to decide the amount of damages to
award, say, Miss Maudie, when Miss Rachel ran over her with a car.
Link wouldn’t like the thought of losing either lady’s business
at his store, would he? So he tells Judge Taylor that he can’t
serve on the jury because he doesn’t have anybody to keep store for
him while he’s gone. So Judge Taylor excuses him. Sometimes he
excuses him wrathfully.” “What’d make him think either one of
‘em’d stop trading with him?” I asked. Jem said, “Miss Rachel
would, Miss Maudie wouldn’t. But a jury’s vote’s secret,
Atticus.” Our father chuckled. “You’ve many more miles to go,
son. A jury’s vote’s supposed to be secret. Serving on a jury
forces a man to make up his mind and declare himself about something.
Men don’t like to do that. Sometimes it’s unpleasant.” “Tom’s
jury sho‘ made up its mind in a hurry,” Jem muttered. Atticus’s
fingers went to his watchpocket. “No it didn’t,” he said, more
to himself than to us. “That was the one thing that made me think,
well, this may be the shadow of a beginning. That jury took a few
hours. An inevitable verdict, maybe, but usually it takes ‘em just
a few minutes. This time—” he broke off and looked at us. “You
might like to know that there was one fellow who took considerable
wearing down—in the beginning he was rarin’ for an outright
acquittal.” “Who?” Jem was astonished. Atticus’s eyes
twinkled. “It’s not for me to say, but I’ll tell you this much.
He was one of your Old Sarum friends…” “One of the
Cunninghams?” Jem yelped. “One of—I didn’t recognize any of
‘em… you’re jokin’.” He looked at Atticus from the corners
of his eyes. “One of their connections. On a hunch, I didn’t
strike him. Just on a hunch. Could’ve, but I didn’t.” “Golly
Moses,” Jem said reverently. “One minute they’re tryin‘ to
kill him and the next they’re tryin’ to turn him loose… I’ll
never understand those folks as long as I live.” Atticus said you
just had to know ‘em. He said the Cunninghams hadn’t taken
anything from or off of anybody since they migrated to the New World.
He said the other thing about them was, once you earned their respect
they were for you tooth and nail. Atticus said he had a feeling,
nothing more than a suspicion, that they left the jail that night
with considerable respect for the Finches. Then too, he said, it took
a thunderbolt plus another Cunningham to make one of them change his
mind. “If we’d had two of that crowd, we’d’ve had a hung
jury.” Jem said slowly, “You mean you actually put on the jury a
man who wanted to kill you the night before? How could you take such
a risk, Atticus, how could you?” “When you analyze it, there was
little risk. There’s no difference between one man who’s going to
convict and another man who’s going to convict, is there? There’s
a faint 119

difference
between a man who’s going to convict and a man who’s a little
disturbed in his mind, isn’t there? He was the only uncertainty on
the whole list.” “What kin was that man to Mr. Walter
Cunningham?” I asked. Atticus rose, stretched and yawned. It was
not even our bedtime, but we knew he wanted a chance to read his
newspaper. He picked it up, folded it, and tapped my head. “Let’s
see now,” he droned to himself. “I’ve got it. Double first
cousin.” “How can that be?” “Two sisters married two
brothers. That’s all I’ll tell you—you figure it out.” I
tortured myself and decided that if I married Jem and Dill had a
sister whom he married our children would be double first cousins.
“Gee minetti, Jem,” I said, when Atticus had gone, “they’re
funny folks. ‘d you hear that, Aunty?” Aunt Alexandra was hooking
a rug and not watching us, but she was listening. She sat in her
chair with her workbasket beside it, her rug spread across her lap.
Why ladies hooked woolen rugs on boiling nights never became clear to
me. “I heard it,” she said. I remembered the distant disastrous
occasion when I rushed to young Walter Cunningham’s defense. Now I
was glad I’d done it. “Soon’s school starts I’m gonna ask
Walter home to dinner,” I planned, having forgotten my private
resolve to beat him up the next time I saw him. “He can stay over
sometimes after school, too. Atticus could drive him back to Old
Sarum. Maybe he could spend the night with us sometime, okay, Jem?”
“We’ll see about that,” Aunt Alexandra said, a declaration that
with her was always a threat, never a promise. Surprised, I turned to
her. “Why not, Aunty? They’re good folks.” She looked at me
over her sewing glasses. “Jean Louise, there is no doubt in my mind
that they’re good folks. But they’re not our kind of folks.”
Jem says, “She means they’re yappy, Scout.” “What’s a yap?”
“Aw, tacky. They like fiddlin‘ and things like that.” “Well I
do too—” “Don’t be silly, Jean Louise,” said Aunt
Alexandra. “The thing is, you can scrub Walter Cunningham till he
shines, you can put him in shoes and a new suit, but he’ll never be
like Jem. Besides, there’s a drinking streak in that family a mile
wide. Finch women aren’t interested in that sort of people.”
“Aun-ty,” said Jem, “she ain’t nine yet.” “She may as
well learn it now.” Aunt Alexandra had spoken. I was reminded
vividly of the last time she had put her foot down. I never knew why.
It was when I was absorbed with plans to visit Calpurnia’s house—I
was curious, interested; I wanted to be her “company,” to see how
she lived, who her friends were. I might as well have wanted to see
the other side of the moon. This time the tactics were different, but
Aunt Alexandra’s aim was the same. Perhaps this was why she had
come to live with us—to help us choose our friends. I would hold
her off as long as I could: “If they’re good folks, then why
can’t I be nice to Walter?” “I didn’t say not to be nice to
him. You should be friendly and polite to him, you should be gracious
to everybody, dear. But you don’t have to invite him home.” “What
if he was kin to us, Aunty?” “The fact is that he is not kin to
us, but if he were, my answer would be the same.” “Aunty,” Jem
spoke up, “Atticus says you can choose your friends but you sho‘
can’t choose your family, an’ they’re still kin to you no
matter whether you acknowledge ‘em or not, and it makes you look
right silly when you don’t.” “That’s your father all over
again,” said Aunt Alexandra, “and I still say that Jean Louise
will not invite Walter Cunningham to this house. If he were her
double first cousin once removed he would still not be received in
this house unless he comes to see Atticus on business. Now that is
that.” She had said Indeed Not, but this time she would give her
reasons: “But I want to play 120

with
Walter, Aunty, why can’t I?” She took off her glasses and stared
at me. “I’ll tell you why,” she said. “Because—he—is—trash,
that’s why you can’t play with him. I’ll not have you around
him, picking up his habits and learning Lord-knows-what. You’re
enough of a problem to your father as it is.” I don’t know what I
would have done, but Jem stopped me. He caught me by the shoulders,
put his arm around me, and led me sobbing in fury to his bedroom.
Atticus heard us and poked his head around the door. “‘s all
right, sir,” Jem said gruffly, “’s not anything.” Atticus
went away. “Have a chew, Scout.” Jem dug into his pocket and
extracted a Tootsie Roll. It took a few minutes to work the candy
into a comfortable wad inside my jaw. Jem was rearranging the objects
on his dresser. His hair stuck up behind and down in front, and I
wondered if it would ever look like a man’s—maybe if he shaved it
off and started over, his hair would grow back neatly in place. His
eyebrows were becoming heavier, and I noticed a new slimness about
his body. He was growing taller. When he looked around, he must have
thought I would start crying again, for he said, “Show you
something if you won’t tell anybody.” I said what. He unbuttoned
his shirt, grinning shyly. “Well what?” “Well can’t you see
it?” “Well no.” “Well it’s hair.” “Where?” “There.
Right there.” He had been a comfort to me, so I said it looked
lovely, but I didn’t see anything. “It’s real nice, Jem.”
“Under my arms, too,” he said. “Goin‘ out for football next
year. Scout, don’t let Aunty aggravate you.” It seemed only
yesterday that he was telling me not to aggravate Aunty. “You know
she’s not used to girls,” said Jem, “leastways, not girls like
you. She’s trying to make you a lady. Can’t you take up sewin‘
or somethin’?” “Hell no. She doesn’t like me, that’s all
there is to it, and I don’t care. It was her callin‘ Walter
Cunningham trash that got me goin’, Jem, not what she said about
being a problem to Atticus. We got that all straight one time, I
asked him if I was a problem and he said not much of one, at most one
that he could always figure out, and not to worry my head a second
about botherin‘ him. Naw, it was Walter—that boy’s not trash,
Jem. He ain’t like the Ewells.” Jem kicked off his shoes and
swung his feet to the bed. He propped himself against a pillow and
switched on the reading light. “You know something, Scout? I’ve
got it all figured out, now. I’ve thought about it a lot lately and
I’ve got it figured out. There’s four kinds of folks in the
world. There’s the ordinary kind like us and the neighbors, there’s
the kind like the Cunninghams out in the woods, the kind like the
Ewells down at the dump, and the Negroes.” “What about the
Chinese, and the Cajuns down yonder in Baldwin County?” “I mean
in Maycomb County. The thing about it is, our kind of folks don’t
like the Cunninghams, the Cunninghams don’t like the Ewells, and
the Ewells hate and despise the colored folks.” I told Jem if that
was so, then why didn’t Tom’s jury, made up of folks like the
Cunninghams, acquit Tom to spite the Ewells?“ Jem waved my question
away as being infantile. “You know,” he said, “I’ve seen
Atticus pat his foot when there’s fiddlin‘ on the radio, and he
loves pot liquor better’n any man I ever saw—” “Then that
makes us like the Cunninghams,” I said. “I can’t see why
Aunty—” “No, lemme finish—it does, but we’re still
different somehow. Atticus said one time the reason Aunty’s so
hipped on the family is because all we’ve got’s background and
not a dime to our names.” 121

“Well
Jem, I don’t know—Atticus told me one time that most of this Old
Family stuff’s foolishness because everybody’s family’s just as
old as everybody else’s. I said did that include the colored folks
and Englishmen and he said yes.” “Background doesn’t mean Old
Family,” said Jem. “I think it’s how long your family’s been
readin‘ and writin’. Scout, I’ve studied this real hard and
that’s the only reason I can think of. Somewhere along when the
Finches were in Egypt one of ‘em must have learned a hieroglyphic
or two and he taught his boy.” Jem laughed. “Imagine Aunty being
proud her great-grandaddy could read an’ write—ladies pick funny
things to be proud of.” “Well I’m glad he could, or who’da
taught Atticus and them, and if Atticus couldn’t read, you and me’d
be in a fix. I don’t think that’s what background is, Jem.”
“Well then, how do you explain why the Cunninghams are different?
Mr. Walter can hardly sign his name, I’ve seen him. We’ve just
been readin‘ and writin’ longer’n they have.” “No,
everybody’s gotta learn, nobody’s born knowin‘. That Walter’s
as smart as he can be, he just gets held back sometimes because he
has to stay out and help his daddy. Nothin’s wrong with him. Naw,
Jem, I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.” Jem turned
around and punched his pillow. When he settled back his face was
cloudy. He was going into one of his declines, and I grew wary. His
brows came together; his mouth became a thin line. He was silent for
a while. “That’s what I thought, too,” he said at last, “when
I was your age. If there’s just one kind of folks, why can’t they
get along with each other? If they’re all alike, why do they go out
of their way to despise each other? Scout, I think I’m beginning to
understand something. I think I’m beginning to understand why Boo
Radley’s stayed shut up in the house all this time… it’s
because he wants
to
stay inside.”

Chapter
24

Calpurnia
wore her stiffest starched apron. She carried a tray of charlotte.
She backed up to the swinging door and pressed gently. I admired the
ease and grace with which she handled heavy loads of dainty things.
So did Aunt Alexandra, I guess, because she had let Calpurnia serve
today. August was on the brink of September. Dill would be leaving
for Meridian tomorrow; today he was off with Jem at Barker’s Eddy.
Jem had discovered with angry amazement that nobody had ever bothered
to teach Dill how to swim, a skill Jem considered necessary as
walking. They had spent two afternoons at the creek, they said they
were going in naked and I couldn’t come, so I divided the lonely
hours between Calpurnia and Miss Maudie. Today Aunt Alexandra and her
missionary circle were fighting the good fight all over the house.
From the kitchen, I heard Mrs. Grace Merriweather giving a report in
the livingroom on the squalid lives of the Mrunas, it sounded like to
me. They put the women out in huts when their time came, whatever
that was; they had no sense of family—I knew that’d distress
Aunty—they subjected children to terrible ordeals when they were
thirteen; they were crawling with yaws and earworms, they chewed up
and spat out the bark of a tree into a communal pot and then got
drunk on it. Immediately thereafter, the ladies adjourned for
refreshments. I didn’t know whether to go into the diningroom or
stay out. Aunt Alexandra told me to join them for refreshments; it
was not necessary that I attend the business part of the meeting, she
said it’d bore me. I was wearing my pink Sunday dress, shoes, and a
petticoat, and reflected that if I spilled anything Calpurnia would
have to wash my dress again for tomorrow. This had been a busy day
for her. I decided to stay out. “Can I help you, Cal?” I asked,
wishing to be of some service. Calpurnia paused in the doorway. “You
be still as a mouse in that corner,” she said, “an‘ you can
help me load up the trays when I come back.” The gentle hum of
ladies’ voices grew louder as she opened the door: “Why, 122

Alexandra,
I never saw such charlotte… just lovely… I never can get my crust
like this, never can… who’d‘ve thought of little dewberry
tarts… Calpurnia?… who’da thought it… anybody tell you that
the preacher’s wife’s… nooo, well she is, and that other one
not walkin’ yet…” They became quiet, and I knew they had all
been served. Calpurnia returned and put my mother’s heavy silver
pitcher on a tray. “This coffee pitcher’s a curiosity,” she
murmured, “they don’t make ‘em these days.” “Can I carry it
in?” “If you be careful and don’t drop it. Set it down at the
end of the table by Miss Alexandra. Down there by the cups’n
things. She’s gonna pour.” I tried pressing my behind against the
door as Calpurnia had done, but the door didn’t budge. Grinning,
she held it open for me. “Careful now, it’s heavy. Don’t look
at it and you won’t spill it.” My journey was successful: Aunt
Alexandra smiled brilliantly. “Stay with us, Jean Louise,” she
said. This was a part of her campaign to teach me to be a lady. It
was customary for every circle hostess to invite her neighbors in for
refreshments, be they Baptists or Presbyterians, which accounted for
the presence of Miss Rachel (sober as a judge), Miss Maudie and Miss
Stephanie Crawford. Rather nervous, I took a seat beside Miss Maudie
and wondered why ladies put on their hats to go across the street.
Ladies in bunches always filled me with vague apprehension and a firm
desire to be elsewhere, but this feeling was what Aunt Alexandra
called being “spoiled.” The ladies were cool in fragile pastel
prints: most of them were heavily powdered but unrouged; the only
lipstick in the room was Tangee Natural. Cutex Natural sparkled on
their fingernails, but some of the younger ladies wore Rose. They
smelled heavenly. I sat quietly, having conquered my hands by tightly
gripping the arms of the chair, and waited for someone to speak to
me. Miss Maudie’s gold bridgework twinkled. “You’re mighty
dressed up, Miss Jean Louise,” she said, “Where are your britches
today?” “Under my dress.” I hadn’t meant to be funny, but the
ladies laughed. My cheeks grew hot as I realized my mistake, but Miss
Maudie looked gravely down at me. She never laughed at me unless I
meant to be funny. In the sudden silence that followed, Miss
Stephanie Crawford called from across the room, “Whatcha going to
be when you grow up, Jean Louise? A lawyer?” “Nome, I hadn’t
thought about it…” I answered, grateful that Miss Stephanie was
kind enough to change the subject. Hurriedly I began choosing my
vocation. Nurse? Aviator? “Well…” “Why shoot, I thought you
wanted to be a lawyer, you’ve already commenced going to court.”
The ladies laughed again. “That Stephanie’s a card,” somebody
said. Miss Stephanie was encouraged to pursue the subject: “Don’t
you want to grow up to be a lawyer?” Miss Maudie’s hand touched
mine and I answered mildly enough, “Nome, just a lady.” Miss
Stephanie eyed me suspiciously, decided that I meant no impertinence,
and contented herself with, “Well, you won’t get very far until
you start wearing dresses more often.” Miss Maudie’s hand closed
tightly on mine, and I said nothing. Its warmth was enough. Mrs.
Grace Merriweather sat on my left, and I felt it would be polite to
talk to her. Mr. Merriweather, a faithful Methodist under duress,
apparently saw nothing personal in singing, “Amazing Grace, how
sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me…” It was the general
opinion of Maycomb, however, that Mrs. Merriweather had sobered him
up and made a reasonably useful citizen of him. For certainly Mrs.
Merriweather was the most devout lady in Maycomb. I searched for a
topic of interest to her. “What did you all study this afternoon?”
I asked. “Oh child, those poor Mrunas,” she said, and was off.
Few other questions would be 123

necessary.
Mrs. Merriweather’s large brown eyes always filled with tears when
she considered the oppressed. “Living in that jungle with nobody
but J. Grimes Everett,” she said. “Not a white person’ll go
near ‘em but that saintly J. Grimes Everett.” Mrs. Merriweather
played her voice like an organ; every word she said received its full
measure: “The poverty… the darkness… the immorality—nobody
but J. Grimes Everett knows. You know, when the church gave me that
trip to the camp grounds J. Grimes Everett said to me—” “Was he
there, ma’am? I thought—” “Home on leave. J. Grimes Everett
said to me, he said, ‘Mrs. Merriweather, you have no conception, no
conception
of what we are fighting over there.’ That’s what he said to me.”
“Yes ma’am.” “I said to him, ‘Mr. Everett,’ I said, ‘the
ladies of the Maycomb Alabama Methodist Episcopal Church South are
behind you one hundred percent.’ That’s what I said to him. And
you know, right then and there I made a pledge in my heart. I said to
myself, when I go home I’m going to give a course on the Mrunas and
bring J. Grimes Everett’s message to Maycomb and that’s just what
I’m doing.” “Yes ma’am.” When Mrs. Merriweather shook her
head, her black curls jiggled. “Jean Louise,” she said, “you
are a fortunate girl. You live in a Christian home with Christian
folks in a Christian town. Out there in J. Grimes Everett’s land
there’s nothing but sin and squalor.” “Yes ma’am.” “Sin
and squalor—what was that, Gertrude?” Mrs. Merriweather turned on
her chimes for the lady sitting beside her. “Oh that. Well, I
always say forgive and forget, forgive and forget. Thing that church
ought to do is help her lead a Christian life for those children from
here on out. Some of the men ought to go out there and tell that
preacher to encourage her.” “Excuse me, Mrs. Merriweather,” I
interrupted, “are you all talking about Mayella Ewell?” “May—?
No, child. That darky’s wife. Tom’s wife, Tom—” “Robinson,
ma’am.” Mrs. Merriweather turned back to her neighbor. “There’s
one thing I truly believe, Gertrude,” she continued, “but some
people just don’t see it my way. If we just let them know we
forgive ‘em, that we’ve forgotten it, then this whole thing’ll
blow over.” “Ah—Mrs. Merriweather,” I interrupted once more,
“what’ll blow over?” Again, she turned to me. Mrs. Merriweather
was one of those childless adults who find it necessary to assume a
different tone of voice when speaking to children. “Nothing, Jean
Louise,” she said, in stately largo, “the cooks and field hands
are just dissatisfied, but they’re settling down now—they
grumbled all next day after that trial.” Mrs. Merriweather faced
Mrs. Farrow: “Gertrude, I tell you there’s nothing more
distracting than a sulky darky. Their mouths go down to here. Just
ruins your day to have one of ‘em in the kitchen. You know what I
said to my Sophy, Gertrude? I said, ’Sophy,‘ I said, ’you
simply are not being a Christian today. Jesus Christ never went
around grumbling and complaining,‘ and you know, it did her good.
She took her eyes off that floor and said, ’Nome, Miz Merriweather,
Jesus never went around grumblin‘.’ I tell you, Gertrude, you
never ought to let an opportunity go by to witness for the Lord.” I
was reminded of the ancient little organ in the chapel at Finch’s
Landing. When I was very small, and if I had been very good during
the day, Atticus would let me pump its bellows while he picked out a
tune with one finger. The last note would linger as long as there was
air to sustain it. Mrs. Merriweather had run out of air, I judged,
and was replenishing her supply while Mrs. Farrow composed herself to
speak. Mrs. Farrow was a splendidly built woman with pale eyes and
narrow feet. She had a fresh permanent wave, and her hair was a mass
of tight gray ringlets. She was the 124

second
most devout lady in Maycomb. She had a curious habit of prefacing
everything she said with a soft sibilant sound. “S-s-s Grace,”
she said, “it’s just like I was telling Brother Hutson the other
day. ‘S-s-s Brother Hutson,’ I said, ‘looks like we’re
fighting a losing battle, a losing battle.’ I said, ‘S-s-s it
doesn’t matter to ’em one bit. We can educate ‘em till we’re
blue in the face, we can try till we drop to make Christians out of
’em, but there’s no lady safe in her bed these nights.‘ He said
to me, ’Mrs. Farrow, I don’t know what we’re coming to down
here.‘ S-s-s I told him that was certainly a fact.” Mrs.
Merriweather nodded wisely. Her voice soared over the clink of coffee
cups and the soft bovine sounds of the ladies munching their
dainties. “Gertrude,” she said, “I tell you there are some good
but misguided people in this town. Good, but misguided. Folks in this
town who think they’re doing right, I mean. Now far be it from me
to say who, but some of ‘em in this town thought they were doing
the right thing a while back, but all they did was stir ’em up.
That’s all they did. Might’ve looked like the right thing to do
at the time, I’m sure I don’t know, I’m not read in that field,
but sulky… dissatisfied… I tell you if my Sophy’d kept it up
another day I’d have let her go. It’s never entered that wool of
hers that the only reason I keep her is because this depression’s
on and she needs her dollar and a quarter every week she can get it.”
“His food doesn’t stick going down, does it?” Miss Maudie said
it. Two tight lines had appeared at the corners of her mouth. She had
been sitting silently beside me, her coffee cup balanced on one knee.
I had lost the thread of conversation long ago, when they quit
talking about Tom Robinson’s wife, and had contented myself with
thinking of Finch’s Landing and the river. Aunt Alexandra had got
it backwards: the business part of the meeting was blood-curdling,
the social hour was dreary. “Maudie, I’m sure I don’t know what
you mean,” said Mrs. Merriweather. “I’m sure you do,” Miss
Maudie said shortly. She said no more. When Miss Maudie was angry her
brevity was icy. Something had made her deeply angry, and her gray
eyes were as cold as her voice. Mrs. Merriweather reddened, glanced
at me, and looked away. I could not see Mrs. Farrow. Aunt Alexandra
got up from the table and swiftly passed more refreshments, neatly
engaging Mrs. Merriweather and Mrs. Gates in brisk conversation. When
she had them well on the road with Mrs. Perkins, Aunt Alexandra
stepped back. She gave Miss Maudie a look of pure gratitude, and I
wondered at the world of women. Miss Maudie and Aunt Alexandra had
never been especially close, and here was Aunty silently thanking her
for something. For what, I knew not. I was content to learn that Aunt
Alexandra could be pierced sufficiently to feel gratitude for help
given. There was no doubt about it, I must soon enter this world,
where on its surface fragrant ladies rocked slowly, fanned gently,
and drank cool water. But I was more at home in my father’s world.
People like Mr. Heck Tate did not trap you with innocent questions to
make fun of you; even Jem was not highly critical unless you said
something stupid. Ladies seemed to live in faint horror of men,
seemed unwilling to approve wholeheartedly of them. But I liked them.
There was something about them, no matter how much they cussed and
drank and gambled and chewed; no matter how undelectable they were,
there was something about them that I instinctively liked… they
weren’t— “Hypocrites, Mrs. Perkins, born hypocrites,” Mrs.
Merriweather was saying. “At least we don’t have that sin on our
shoulders down here. People up there set ‘em free, but you don’t
see ’em settin‘ at the table with ’em. At least we don’t have
the deceit to say to ‘em yes you’re as good as we are but stay
away from us. Down here we just say you live your way and we’ll
live ours. I think that woman, that Mrs. Roosevelt’s lost her
mind—just plain lost her mind coming down to Birmingham and tryin’
to sit with ‘em. If I was the Mayor of Birmingham I’d—” Well,
neither of us was the Mayor of Birmingham, but I wished I was the
Governor of Alabama for one day: I’d let Tom Robinson go so quick
the Missionary Society wouldn’t 125

have
time to catch its breath. Calpurnia was telling Miss Rachel’s cook
the other day how bad Tom was taking things and she didn’t stop
talking when I came into the kitchen. She said there wasn’t a thing
Atticus could do to make being shut up easier for him, that the last
thing he said to Atticus before they took him down to the prison camp
was, “Good-bye, Mr. Finch, there ain’t nothin‘ you can do now,
so there ain’t no use tryin’.” Calpurnia said Atticus told her
that the day they took Tom to prison he just gave up hope. She said
Atticus tried to explain things to him, and that he must do his best
not to lose hope because Atticus was doing his best to get him free.
Miss Rachel’s cook asked Calpurnia why didn’t Atticus just say
yes, you’ll go free, and leave it at that—seemed like that’d be
a big comfort to Tom. Calpurnia said, “Because you ain’t familiar
with the law. First thing you learn when you’re in a lawin‘
family is that there ain’t any definite answers to anything. Mr.
Finch couldn’t say somethin’s so when he doesn’t know for sure
it’s so.” The front door slammed and I heard Atticus’s
footsteps in the hall. Automatically I wondered what time it was. Not
nearly time for him to be home, and on Missionary Society days he
usually stayed downtown until black dark. He stopped in the doorway.
His hat was in his hand, and his face was white. “Excuse me,
ladies,” he said. “Go right ahead with your meeting, don’t let
me disturb you. Alexandra, could you come to the kitchen a minute? I
want to borrow Calpurnia for a while.” He didn’t go through the
diningroom, but went down the back hallway and entered the kitchen
from the rear door. Aunt Alexandra and I met him. The diningroom door
opened again and Miss Maudie joined us. Calpurnia had half risen from
her chair. “Cal,” Atticus said, “I want you to go with me out
to Helen Robinson’s house—” “What’s the matter?” Aunt
Alexandra asked, alarmed by the look on my father’s face. “Tom’s
dead.” Aunt Alexandra put her hands to her mouth. “They shot
him,” said Atticus. “He was running. It was during their exercise
period. They said he just broke into a blind raving charge at the
fence and started climbing over. Right in front of them—” “Didn’t
they try to stop him? Didn’t they give him any warning?” Aunt
Alexandra’s voice shook. “Oh yes, the guards called to him to
stop. They fired a few shots in the air, then to kill. They got him
just as he went over the fence. They said if he’d had two good arms
he’d have made it, he was moving that fast. Seventeen bullet holes
in him. They didn’t have to shoot him that much. Cal, I want you to
come out with me and help me tell Helen.” “Yes sir,” she
murmured, fumbling at her apron. Miss Maudie went to Calpurnia and
untied it. “This is the last straw, Atticus,” Aunt Alexandra
said. “Depends on how you look at it,” he said. “What was one
Negro, more or less, among two hundred of ‘em? He wasn’t Tom to
them, he was an escaping prisoner.” Atticus leaned against the
refrigerator, pushed up his glasses, and rubbed his eyes. “We had
such a good chance,” he said. “I told him what I thought, but I
couldn’t in truth say that we had more than a good chance. I guess
Tom was tired of white men’s chances and preferred to take his own.
Ready, Cal?” “Yessir, Mr. Finch.” “Then let’s go.” Aunt
Alexandra sat down in Calpurnia’s chair and put her hands to her
face. She sat quite still; she was so quiet I wondered if she would
faint. I heard Miss Maudie breathing as if she had just climbed the
steps, and in the diningroom the ladies chattered happily. I thought
Aunt Alexandra was crying, but when she took her hands away from her
face, she was not. She looked weary. She spoke, and her voice was
flat. “I can’t say I approve of everything he does, Maudie, but
he’s my brother, and I just want to know when this will ever end.”
Her voice rose: “It tears him to pieces. He doesn’t show it much,
but it tears him to pieces. I’ve seen him when—what else do they
want from him, Maudie, what else?” 126

“What
does who want, Alexandra?” Miss Maudie asked. “I mean this town.
They’re perfectly willing to let him do what they’re too afraid
to do themselves—it might lose ‘em a nickel. They’re perfectly
willing to let him wreck his health doing what they’re afraid to
do, they’re—” “Be quiet, they’ll hear you,” said Miss
Maudie. “Have you ever thought of it this way, Alexandra? Whether
Maycomb knows it or not, we’re paying the highest tribute we can
pay a man. We trust him to do right. It’s that simple.” “Who?”
Aunt Alexandra never knew she was echoing her twelve-year-old nephew.
“The handful of people in this town who say that fair play is not
marked White Only; the handful of people who say a fair trial is for
everybody, not just us; the handful of people with enough humility to
think, when they look at a Negro, there but for the Lord’s kindness
am l.” Miss Maudie’s old crispness was returning: “The handful
of people in this town with background, that’s who they are.” Had
I been attentive, I would have had another scrap to add to Jem’s
definition of background, but I found myself shaking and couldn’t
stop. I had seen Enfield Prison Farm, and Atticus had pointed out the
exercise yard to me. It was the size of a football field. “Stop
that shaking,” commanded Miss Maudie, and I stopped. “Get up,
Alexandra, we’ve left ‘em long enough.” Aunt Alexandra rose and
smoothed the various whalebone ridges along her hips. She took her
handkerchief from her belt and wiped her nose. She patted her hair
and said, “Do I show it?” “Not a sign,” said Miss Maudie.
“Are you together again, Jean Louise?” “Yes ma’am.” “Then
let’s join the ladies,” she said grimly. Their voices swelled
when Miss Maudie opened the door to the diningroom. Aunt Alexandra
was ahead of me, and I saw her head go up as she went through the
door. “Oh, Mrs. Perkins,” she said, “you need some more coffee.
Let me get it.” “Calpurnia’s on an errand for a few minutes,
Grace,” said Miss Maudie. “Let me pass you some more of those
dewberry tarts. ‘dyou hear what that cousin of mine did the other
day, the one who likes to go fishing?…” And so they went, down
the row of laughing women, around the diningroom, refilling coffee
cups, dishing out goodies as though their only regret was the
temporary domestic disaster of losing Calpurnia. The gentle hum began
again. “Yes sir, Mrs. Perkins, that J. Grimes Everett is a martyred
saint, he… needed to get married so they ran… to the beauty
parlor every Saturday afternoon… soon as the sun goes down. He goes
to bed with the… chickens, a crate full of sick chickens, Fred says
that’s what started it all. Fred says…” Aunt Alexandra looked
across the room at me and smiled. She looked at a tray of cookies on
the table and nodded at them. I carefully picked up the tray and
watched myself walk to Mrs. Merriweather. With my best company
manners, I asked her if she would have some. After all, if Aunty
could be a lady at a time like this, so could I.

Chapter
25

“Don’t
do that, Scout. Set him out on the back steps.” “Jem, are you
crazy?…” “I said set him out on the back steps.” Sighing, I
scooped up the small creature, placed him on the bottom step and went
back to my cot. September had come, but not a trace of cool weather
with it, and we were still sleeping on the back screen porch.
Lightning bugs were still about, the night crawlers and flying
insects that beat against the screen the summer long had not gone
wherever they go when autumn comes. A roly-poly had found his way
inside the house; I reasoned that the tiny varmint had 127

crawled
up the steps and under the door. I was putting my book on the floor
beside my cot when I saw him. The creatures are no more than an inch
long, and when you touch them they roll themselves into a tight gray
ball. I lay on my stomach, reached down and poked him. He rolled up.
Then, feeling safe, I suppose, he slowly unrolled. He traveled a few
inches on his hundred legs and I touched him again. He rolled up.
Feeling sleepy, I decided to end things. My hand was going down on
him when Jem spoke. Jem was scowling. It was probably a part of the
stage he was going through, and I wished he would hurry up and get
through it. He was certainly never cruel to animals, but I had never
known his charity to embrace the insect world. “Why couldn’t I
mash him?” I asked. “Because they don’t bother you,” Jem
answered in the darkness. He had turned out his reading light.
“Reckon you’re at the stage now where you don’t kill flies and
mosquitoes now, I reckon,” I said. “Lemme know when you change
your mind. Tell you one thing, though, I ain’t gonna sit around and
not scratch a redbug.” “Aw dry up,” he answered drowsily. Jem
was the one who was getting more like a girl every day, not I.
Comfortable, I lay on my back and waited for sleep, and while waiting
I thought of Dill. He had left us the first of the month with firm
assurances that he would return the minute school was out—he
guessed his folks had got the general idea that he liked to spend his
summers in Maycomb. Miss Rachel took us with them in the taxi to
Maycomb Junction, and Dill waved to us from the train window until he
was out of sight. He was not out of mind: I missed him. The last two
days of his time with us, Jem had taught him to swim— Taught him to
swim. I was wide awake, remembering what Dill had told me. Barker’s
Eddy is at the end of a dirt road off the Meridian highway about a
mile from town. It is easy to catch a ride down the highway on a
cotton wagon or from a passing motorist, and the short walk to the
creek is easy, but the prospect of walking all the way back home at
dusk, when the traffic is light, is tiresome, and swimmers are
careful not to stay too late. According to Dill, he and Jem had just
come to the highway when they saw Atticus driving toward them. He
looked like he had not seen them, so they both waved. Atticus finally
slowed down; when they caught up with him he said, “You’d better
catch a ride back. I won’t be going home for a while.” Calpurnia
was in the back seat. Jem protested, then pleaded, and Atticus said,
“All right, you can come with us if you stay in the car.” On the
way to Tom Robinson’s, Atticus told them what had happened. They
turned off the highway, rode slowly by the dump and past the Ewell
residence, down the narrow lane to the Negro cabins. Dill said a
crowd of black children were playing marbles in Tom’s front yard.
Atticus parked the car and got out. Calpurnia followed him through
the front gate. Dill heard him ask one of the children, “Where’s
your mother, Sam?” and heard Sam say, “She down at Sis Stevens’s,
Mr. Finch. Want me run fetch her?” Dill said Atticus looked
uncertain, then he said yes, and Sam scampered off. “Go on with
your game, boys,” Atticus said to the children. A little girl came
to the cabin door and stood looking at Atticus. Dill said her hair
was a wad of tiny stiff pigtails, each ending in a bright bow. She
grinned from ear to ear and walked toward our father, but she was too
small to navigate the steps. Dill said Atticus went to her, took off
his hat, and offered her his finger. She grabbed it and he eased her
down the steps. Then he gave her to Calpurnia. Sam was trotting
behind his mother when they came up. Dill said Helen said, “‘evenin’,
Mr. Finch, won’t you have a seat?” But she didn’t say any more.
Neither did Atticus. “Scout,” said Dill, “she just fell down in
the dirt. Just fell down in the dirt, like a giant with a big foot
just came along and stepped on her. Just ump—” Dill’s fat foot
hit the ground. “Like you’d step on an ant.” Dill said
Calpurnia and Atticus lifted Helen to her feet and half carried, half
walked her 128

to
the cabin. They stayed inside a long time, and Atticus came out
alone. When they drove back by the dump, some of the Ewells hollered
at them, but Dill didn’t catch what they said. Maycomb was
interested by the news of Tom’s death for perhaps two days; two
days was enough for the information to spread through the county.
“Did you hear about?… No? Well, they say he was runnin‘ fit to
beat lightnin’…” To Maycomb, Tom’s death was typical. Typical
of a nigger to cut and run. Typical of a nigger’s mentality to have
no plan, no thought for the future, just run blind first chance he
saw. Funny thing, Atticus Finch might’ve got him off scot free, but
wait—? Hell no. You know how they are. Easy come, easy go. Just
shows you, that Robinson boy was legally married, they say he kept
himself clean, went to church and all that, but when it comes down to
the line the veneer’s mighty thin. Nigger always comes out in ‘em.
A few more details, enabling the listener to repeat his version in
turn, then nothing to talk about until The
Maycomb Tribune appeared
the following Thursday. There was a brief obituary in the Colored
News, but there was also an editorial. Mr. B. B. Underwood was at his
most bitter, and he couldn’t have cared less who canceled
advertising and subscriptions. (But Maycomb didn’t play that way:
Mr. Underwood could holler till he sweated and write whatever he
wanted to, he’d still get his advertising and subscriptions. If he
wanted to make a fool of himself in his paper that was his business.)
Mr. Underwood didn’t talk about miscarriages of justice, he was
writing so children could understand. Mr. Underwood simply figured it
was a sin to kill cripples, be they standing, sitting, or escaping.
He likened Tom’s death to the senseless slaughter of songbirds by
hunters and children, and Maycomb thought he was trying to write an
editorial poetical enough to be reprinted in The
Montgomery Advertiser.
How could this be so, I wondered, as I read Mr. Underwood’s
editorial. Senseless killing—Tom had been given due process of law
to the day of his death; he had been tried openly and convicted by
twelve good men and true; my father had fought for him all the way.
Then Mr. Underwood’s meaning became clear: Atticus had used every
tool available to free men to save Tom Robinson, but in the secret
courts of men’s hearts Atticus had no case. Tom was a dead man the
minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed. The name Ewell
gave me a queasy feeling. Maycomb had lost no time in getting Mr.
Ewell’s views on Tom’s demise and passing them along through that
English Channel of gossip, Miss Stephanie Crawford. Miss Stephanie
told Aunt Alexandra in Jem’s presence (“Oh foot, he’s old
enough to listen.”) that Mr. Ewell said it made one down and about
two more to go. Jem told me not to be afraid, Mr. Ewell was more hot
gas than anything. Jem also told me that if I breathed a word to
Atticus, if in any way I let Atticus know I knew, Jem would
personally never speak to me again.

Chapter
26

School
started, and so did our daily trips past the Radley Place. Jem was in
the seventh grade and went to high school, beyond the grammar-school
building; I was now in the third grade, and our routines were so
different I only walked to school with Jem in the mornings and saw
him at mealtimes. He went out for football, but was too slender and
too young yet to do anything but carry the team water buckets. This
he did with enthusiasm; most afternoons he was seldom home before
dark. The Radley Place had ceased to terrify me, but it was no less
gloomy, no less chilly under its great oaks, and no less uninviting.
Mr. Nathan Radley could still be seen on a clear day, walking to and
from town; we knew Boo was there, for the same old reason—nobody’d
seen him carried out yet. I sometimes felt a twinge of remorse, when
passing by the old place, at ever having taken part in what must have
been sheer torment to Arthur Radley—what reasonable recluse wants
children peeping through his shutters, delivering greetings on the
end of a fishing-pole, wandering in his collards at night? And yet I
remembered. Two Indian-head pennies, chewing gum, soap dolls, a rusty
medal, a 129

broken
watch and chain. Jem must have put them away somewhere. I stopped and
looked at the tree one afternoon: the trunk was swelling around its
cement patch. The patch itself was turning yellow. We had almost seen
him a couple of times, a good enough score for anybody. But I still
looked for him each time I went by. Maybe someday we would see him. I
imagined how it would be: when it happened, he’d just be sitting in
the swing when I came along. “Hidy do, Mr. Arthur,” I would say,
as if I had said it every afternoon of my life. “Evening, Jean
Louise,” he would say, as if he had said it every afternoon of my
life, “right pretty spell we’re having, isn’t it?” “Yes
sir, right pretty,” I would say, and go on. It was only a fantasy.
We would never see him. He probably did go out when the moon was down
and gaze upon Miss Stephanie Crawford. I’d have picked somebody
else to look at, but that was his business. He would never gaze at
us. “You aren’t starting that again, are you?” said Atticus one
night, when I expressed a stray desire just to have one good look at
Boo Radley before I died. “If you are, I’ll tell you right now:
stop it. I’m too old to go chasing you off the Radley property.
Besides, it’s dangerous. You might get shot. You know Mr. Nathan
shoots at every shadow he sees, even shadows that leave size-four
bare footprints. You were lucky not to be killed.” I hushed then
and there. At the same time I marveled at Atticus. This was the first
he had let us know he knew a lot more about something than we thought
he knew. And it had happened years ago. No, only last summer—no,
summer before last, when… time was playing tricks on me. I must
remember to ask Jem. So many things had happened to us, Boo Radley
was the least of our fears. Atticus said he didn’t see how anything
else could happen, that things had a way of settling down, and after
enough time passed people would forget that Tom Robinson’s
existence was ever brought to their attention. Perhaps Atticus was
right, but the events of the summer hung over us like smoke in a
closed room. The adults in Maycomb never discussed the case with Jem
and me; it seemed that they discussed it with their children, and
their attitude must have been that neither of us could help having
Atticus for a parent, so their children must be nice to us in spite
of him. The children would never have thought that up for themselves:
had our classmates been left to their own devices, Jem and I would
have had several swift, satisfying fist-fights apiece and ended the
matter for good. As it was, we were compelled to hold our heads high
and be, respectively, a gentleman and a lady. In a way, it was like
the era of Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose, without all her yelling.
There was one odd thing, though, that I never understood: in spite of
Atticus’s shortcomings as a parent, people were content to re-elect
him to the state legislature that year, as usual, without opposition.
I came to the conclusion that people were just peculiar, I withdrew
from them, and never thought about them until I was forced to. I was
forced to one day in school. Once a week, we had a Current Events
period. Each child was supposed to clip an item from a newspaper,
absorb its contents, and reveal them to the class. This practice
allegedly overcame a variety of evils: standing in front of his
fellows encouraged good posture and gave a child poise; delivering a
short talk made him word-conscious; learning his current event
strengthened his memory; being singled out made him more than ever
anxious to return to the Group. The idea was profound, but as usual,
in Maycomb it didn’t work very well. In the first place, few rural
children had access to newspapers, so the burden of Current Events
was borne by the town children, convincing the bus children more
deeply that the town children got all the attention anyway. The rural
children who could, usually brought clippings from what they called
The Grit Paper, a publication spurious in the eyes of Miss Gates, our
teacher. Why she frowned when a child recited from The Grit Paper I
never knew, but in some way it was associated with liking fiddling,
eating syrupy biscuits for lunch, being a holy-roller, singing
Sweetly Sings the Donkey and pronouncing it dunkey, all of which the
state paid teachers to discourage. Even so, not many of the children
knew what a Current Event was. Little Chuck Little, a hundred years
old in his knowledge of cows and their habits, was halfway through an
130

Uncle
Natchell story when Miss Gates stopped him: “Charles, that is not a
current event. That is an advertisement.” Cecil Jacobs knew what
one was, though. When his turn came, he went to the front of the room
and began, “Old Hitler—” “Adolf Hitler, Cecil,” said Miss
Gates. “One never begins with Old anybody.” “Yes ma’am,” he
said. “Old Adolf Hitler has been prosecutin‘ the—”
“Persecuting Cecil…” “Nome, Miss Gates, it says here—well
anyway, old Adolf Hitler has been after the Jews and he’s puttin‘
’em in prisons and he’s taking away all their property and he
won’t let any of ‘em out of the country and he’s washin’ all
the feeble-minded and—” “Washing the feeble-minded?” “Yes
ma’am, Miss Gates, I reckon they don’t have sense enough to wash
themselves, I don’t reckon an idiot could keep hisself clean. Well
anyway, Hitler’s started a program to round up all the half-Jews
too and he wants to register ‘em in case they might wanta cause him
any trouble and I think this is a bad thing and that’s my current
event.” “Very good, Cecil,” said Miss Gates. Puffing, Cecil
returned to his seat. A hand went up in the back of the room. “How
can he do that?” “Who do what?” asked Miss Gates patiently. “I
mean how can Hitler just put a lot of folks in a pen like that, looks
like the govamint’d stop him,” said the owner of the hand.
“Hitler is the government,” said Miss Gates, and seizing an
opportunity to make education dynamic, she went to the blackboard.
She printed DEMOCRACY in large letters. “Democracy,” she said.
“Does anybody have a definition?” “Us,” somebody said. I
raised my hand, remembering an old campaign slogan Atticus had once
told me about. “What do you think it means, Jean Louise?” “‘Equal
rights for all, special privileges for none,’” I quoted. “Very
good, Jean Louise, very good,” Miss Gates smiled. In front of
DEMOCRACY, she printed WE ARE A. “Now class, say it all together,
‘We are a democracy.’” We said it. Then Miss Gates said,
“That’s the difference between America and Germany. We are a
democracy and Germany is a dictatorship. Dictator-ship,” she said.
“Over here we don’t believe in persecuting anybody. Persecution
comes from people who are prejudiced. Prejudice,” she enunciated
carefully. “There are no better people in the world than the Jews,
and why Hitler doesn’t think so is a mystery to me.” An inquiring
soul in the middle of the room said, “Why don’t they like the
Jews, you reckon, Miss Gates?” “I don’t know, Henry. They
contribute to every society they live in, and most of all, they are a
deeply religious people. Hitler’s trying to do away with religion,
so maybe he doesn’t like them for that reason.” Cecil spoke up.
“Well I don’t know for certain,” he said, “they’re supposed
to change money or somethin‘, but that ain’t no cause to
persecute ’em. They’re white, ain’t they?” Miss Gates said,
“When you get to high school, Cecil, you’ll learn that the Jews
have been persecuted since the beginning of history, even driven out
of their own country. It’s one of the most terrible stories in
history. Time for arithmetic, children.” As I had never liked
arithmetic, I spent the period looking out the window. The only time
I ever saw Atticus scowl was when Elmer Davis would give us the
latest on Hitler. Atticus would snap off the radio and say, “Hmp!”
I asked him once why he was impatient with Hitler and Atticus said,
“Because he’s a maniac.” This would not do, I mused, as the
class proceeded with its sums. One maniac and millions of German
folks. Looked to me like they’d shut Hitler in a pen instead of
letting him shut them up. There was something else wrong—I would
ask my father about it. I did, and he said he could not possibly
answer my question because he didn’t know the answer. “But it’s
okay to hate Hitler?” 131

“It
is not,” he said. “It’s not okay to hate anybody.” “Atticus,”
I said, “there’s somethin‘ I don’t understand. Miss Gates
said it was awful, Hitler doin’ like he does, she got real red in
the face about it—” “I should think she would.” “But—”
“Yes?” “Nothing, sir.” I went away, not sure that I could
explain to Atticus what was on my mind, not sure that I could clarify
what was only a feeling. Perhaps Jem could provide the answer. Jem
understood school things better than Atticus. Jem was worn out from a
day’s water-carrying. There were at least twelve banana peels on
the floor by his bed, surrounding an empty milk bottle. “Whatcha
stuffin‘ for?” I asked. “Coach says if I can gain twenty-five
pounds by year after next I can play,” he said. “This is the
quickest way.” “If you don’t throw it all up. Jem,” I said,
“I wanta ask you somethin‘.” “Shoot.” He put down his book
and stretched his legs. “Miss Gates is a nice lady, ain’t she?”
“Why sure,” said Jem. “I liked her when I was in her room.”
“She hates Hitler a lot…” “What’s wrong with that?”
“Well, she went on today about how bad it was him treatin‘ the
Jews like that. Jem, it’s not right to persecute anybody, is it? I
mean have mean thoughts about anybody, even, is it?” “Gracious
no, Scout. What’s eatin‘ you?” “Well, coming out of the
courthouse that night Miss Gates was—she was goin‘ down the steps
in front of us, you musta not seen her—she was talking with Miss
Stephanie Crawford. I heard her say it’s time somebody taught ’em
a lesson, they were gettin‘ way above themselves, an’ the next
thing they think they can do is marry us. Jem, how can you hate
Hitler so bad an‘ then turn around and be ugly about folks right at
home—” Jem was suddenly furious. He leaped off the bed, grabbed
me by the collar and shook me. “I never wanta hear about that
courthouse again, ever, ever, you hear me? You hear me? Don’t you
ever say one word to me about it again, you hear? Now go on!” I was
too surprised to cry. I crept from Jem’s room and shut the door
softly, lest undue noise set him off again. Suddenly tired, I wanted
Atticus. He was in the livingroom, and I went to him and tried to get
in his lap. Atticus smiled. “You’re getting so big now, I’ll
just have to hold a part of you.” He held me close. “Scout,” he
said softly, “don’t let Jem get you down. He’s having a rough
time these days. I heard you back there.” Atticus said that Jem was
trying hard to forget something, but what he was really doing was
storing it away for a while, until enough time passed. Then he would
be able to think about it and sort things out. When he was able to
think about it, Jem would be himself again.

Chapter
27

Things
did settle down, after a fashion, as Atticus said they would. By the
middle of October, only two small things out of the ordinary happened
to two Maycomb citizens. No, there were three things, and they did
not directly concern us—the Finches—but in a way they did. The
first thing was that Mr. Bob Ewell acquired and lost a job in a
matter of days and probably made himself unique in the annals of the
nineteen-thirties: he was the only man I ever heard of who was fired
from the WPA for laziness. I suppose his brief burst of fame brought
on a briefer burst of industry, but his job lasted only as long as
his notoriety: Mr. Ewell found himself as forgotten as Tom Robinson.
Thereafter, he resumed his regular weekly appearances at the welfare
office for his check, and 132

received
it with no grace amid obscure mutterings that the bastards who
thought they ran this town wouldn’t permit an honest man to make a
living. Ruth Jones, the welfare lady, said Mr. Ewell openly accused
Atticus of getting his job. She was upset enough to walk down to
Atticus’s office and tell him about it. Atticus told Miss Ruth not
to fret, that if Bob Ewell wanted to discuss Atticus’s “getting”
his job, he knew the way to the office. The second thing happened to
Judge Taylor. Judge Taylor was not a Sunday-night churchgoer: Mrs.
Taylor was. Judge Taylor savored his Sunday night hour alone in his
big house, and churchtime found him holed up in his study reading the
writings of Bob Taylor (no kin, but the judge would have been proud
to claim it). One Sunday night, lost in fruity metaphors and florid
diction, Judge Taylor’s attention was wrenched from the page by an
irritating scratching noise. “Hush,” he said to Ann Taylor, his
fat nondescript dog. Then he realized he was speaking to an empty
room; the scratching noise was coming from the rear of the house.
Judge Taylor clumped to the back porch to let Ann out and found the
screen door swinging open. A shadow on the corner of the house caught
his eye, and that was all he saw of his visitor. Mrs. Taylor came
home from church to find her husband in his chair, lost in the
writings of Bob Taylor, with a shotgun across his lap. The third
thing happened to Helen Robinson, Tom’s widow. If Mr. Ewell was as
forgotten as Tom Robinson, Tom Robinson was as forgotten as Boo
Radley. But Tom was not forgotten by his employer, Mr. Link Deas. Mr.
Link Deas made a job for Helen. He didn’t really need her, but he
said he felt right bad about the way things turned out. I never knew
who took care of her children while Helen was away. Calpurnia said it
was hard on Helen, because she had to walk nearly a mile out of her
way to avoid the Ewells, who, according to Helen, “chunked at her”
the first time she tried to use the public road. Mr. Link Deas
eventually received the impression that Helen was coming to work each
morning from the wrong direction, and dragged the reason out of her.
“Just let it be, Mr. Link, please suh,” Helen begged. “The hell
I will,” said Mr. Link. He told her to come by his store that
afternoon before she left. She did, and Mr. Link closed his store,
put his hat firmly on his head, and walked Helen home. He walked her
the short way, by the Ewells‘. On his way back, Mr. Link stopped at
the crazy gate. “Ewell?” he called. “I say Ewell!” The
windows, normally packed with children, were empty. “I know every
last one of you’s in there a-layin‘ on the floor! Now hear me,
Bob Ewell: if I hear one more peep outa my girl Helen about not bein’
able to walk this road I’ll have you in jail before sundown!” Mr.
Link spat in the dust and walked home. Helen went to work next
morning and used the public road. Nobody chunked at her, but when she
was a few yards beyond the Ewell house, she looked around and saw Mr.
Ewell walking behind her. She turned and walked on, and Mr. Ewell
kept the same distance behind her until she reached Mr. Link Deas’s
house. All the way to the house, Helen said, she heard a soft voice
behind her, crooning foul words. Thoroughly frightened, she
telephoned Mr. Link at his store, which was not too far from his
house. As Mr. Link came out of his store he saw Mr. Ewell leaning on
the fence. Mr. Ewell said, “Don’t you look at me, Link Deas, like
I was dirt. I ain’t jumped your—” “First thing you can do,
Ewell, is get your stinkin‘ carcass off my property. You’re
leanin’ on it an‘ I can’t afford fresh paint for it. Second
thing you can do is stay away from my cook or I’ll have you up for
assault—” “I ain’t touched her, Link Deas, and ain’t about
to go with no nigger!” “You don’t have to touch her, all you
have to do is make her afraid, an‘ if assault ain’t enough to
keep you locked up awhile, I’ll get you in on the Ladies’ Law, so
get outa my sight! If you don’t think I mean it, just bother that
girl again!” Mr. Ewell evidently thought he meant it, for Helen
reported no further trouble. “I don’t like it, Atticus, I don’t
like it at all,” was Aunt Alexandra’s assessment of these events.
“That man seems to have a permanent running grudge against
everybody connected with that case. I know how that kind are about
paying off grudges, but I don’t understand why he should harbor
one—he had his way in court, didn’t he?” 133

“I
think I understand,” said Atticus. “It might be because he knows
in his heart that very few people in Maycomb really believed his and
Mayella’s yarns. He thought he’d be a hero, but all he got for
his pain was… was, okay, we’ll convict this Negro but get back to
your dump. He’s had his fling with about everybody now, so he ought
to be satisfied. He’ll settle down when the weather changes.”
“But why should he try to burgle John Taylor’s house? He
obviously didn’t know John was home or he wouldn’t‘ve tried.
Only lights John shows on Sunday nights are on the front porch and
back in his den…” “You don’t know if Bob Ewell cut that
screen, you don’t know who did it,” said Atticus. “But I can
guess. I proved him a liar but John made him look like a fool. All
the time Ewell was on the stand I couldn’t dare look at John and
keep a straight face. John looked at him as if he were a three-legged
chicken or a square egg. Don’t tell me judges don’t try to
prejudice juries,” Atticus chuckled. By the end of October, our
lives had become the familiar routine of school, play, study. Jem
seemed to have put out of his mind whatever it was he wanted to
forget, and our classmates mercifully let us forget our father’s
eccentricities. Cecil Jacobs asked me one time if Atticus was a
Radical. When I asked Atticus, Atticus was so amused I was rather
annoyed, but he said he wasn’t laughing at me. He said, “You tell
Cecil I’m about as radical as Cotton Tom Heflin.” Aunt Alexandra
was thriving. Miss Maudie must have silenced the whole missionary
society at one blow, for Aunty again ruled that roost. Her
refreshments grew even more delicious. I learned more about the poor
Mrunas’ social life from listening to Mrs. Merriweather: they had
so little sense of family that the whole tribe was one big family. A
child had as many fathers as there were men in the community, as many
mothers as there were women. J. Grimes Everett was doing his utmost
to change this state of affairs, and desperately needed our prayers.
Maycomb was itself again. Precisely the same as last year and the
year before that, with only two minor changes. Firstly, people had
removed from their store windows and automobiles the stickers that
said NRA—WE DO OUR PART. I asked Atticus why, and he said it was
because the National Recovery Act was dead. I asked who killed it: he
said nine old men. The second change in Maycomb since last year was
not one of national significance. Until then, Halloween in Maycomb
was a completely unorganized affair. Each child did what he wanted to
do, with assistance from other children if there was anything to be
moved, such as placing a light buggy on top of the livery stable. But
parents thought things went too far last year, when the peace of Miss
Tutti and Miss Frutti was shattered. Misses Tutti and Frutti Barber
were maiden ladies, sisters, who lived together in the only Maycomb
residence boasting a cellar. The Barber ladies were rumored to be
Republicans, having migrated from Clanton, Alabama, in 1911. Their
ways were strange to us, and why they wanted a cellar nobody knew,
but they wanted one and they dug one, and they spent the rest of
their lives chasing generations of children out of it. Misses Tutti
and Frutti (their names were Sarah and Frances), aside from their
Yankee ways, were both deaf. Miss Tutti denied it and lived in a
world of silence, but Miss Frutti, not about to miss anything,
employed an ear trumpet so enormous that Jem declared it was a
loudspeaker from one of those dog Victrolas. With these facts in mind
and Halloween at hand, some wicked children had waited until the
Misses Barber were thoroughly asleep, slipped into their livingroom
(nobody but the Radleys locked up at night), stealthily made away
with every stick of furniture therein, and hid it in the cellar. I
deny having taken part in such a thing. “I heard ‘em!” was the
cry that awoke the Misses Barber’s neighbors at dawn next morning.
“Heard ’em drive a truck up to the door! Stomped around like
horses. They’re in New Orleans by now!” Miss Tutti was sure those
traveling fur sellers who came through town two days ago had
purloined their furniture. “Da-rk they were,” she said.
“Syrians.” 134

Mr.
Heck Tate was summoned. He surveyed the area and said he thought it
was a local job. Miss Frutti said she’d know a Maycomb voice
anywhere, and there were no Maycomb voices in that parlor last
night—rolling their r’s all over her premises, they were. Nothing
less than the bloodhounds must be used to locate their furniture,
Miss Tutti insisted, so Mr. Tate was obliged to go ten miles out the
road, round up the county hounds, and put them on the trail. Mr. Tate
started them off at the Misses Barber’s front steps, but all they
did was run around to the back of the house and howl at the cellar
door. When Mr. Tate set them in motion three times, he finally
guessed the truth. By noontime that day, there was not a barefooted
child to be seen in Maycomb and nobody took off his shoes until the
hounds were returned. So the Maycomb ladies said things would be
different this year. The high-school auditorium would be open, there
would be a pageant for the grown-ups; apple-bobbing, taffy-pulling,
pinning the tail on the donkey for the children. There would also be
a prize of twenty-five cents for the best Halloween costume, created
by the wearer. Jem and I both groaned. Not that we’d ever done
anything, it was the principle of the thing. Jem considered himself
too old for Halloween anyway; he said he wouldn’t be caught
anywhere near the high school at something like that. Oh well, I
thought, Atticus would take me. I soon learned, however, that my
services would be required on stage that evening. Mrs. Grace
Merriweather had composed an original pageant entitled Maycomb
County: Ad Astra Per Aspera,
and I was to be a ham. She thought it would be adorable if some of
the children were costumed to represent the county’s agricultural
products: Cecil Jacobs would be dressed up to look like a cow; Agnes
Boone would make a lovely butterbean, another child would be a
peanut, and on down the line until Mrs. Merriweather’s imagination
and the supply of children were exhausted. Our only duties, as far as
I could gather from our two rehearsals, were to enter from stage left
as Mrs. Merriweather (not only the author, but the narrator)
identified us. When she called out, “Pork,” that was my cue. Then
the assembled company would sing, “Maycomb County, Maycomb County,
we will aye be true to thee,” as the grand finale, and Mrs.
Merriweather would mount the stage with the state flag. My costume
was not much of a problem. Mrs. Crenshaw, the local seamstress, had
as much imagination as Mrs. Merriweather. Mrs. Crenshaw took some
chicken wire and bent it into the shape of a cured ham. This she
covered with brown cloth, and painted it to resemble the original. I
could duck under and someone would pull the contraption down over my
head. It came almost to my knees. Mrs. Crenshaw thoughtfully left two
peepholes for me. She did a fine job. Jem said I looked exactly like
a ham with legs. There were several discomforts, though: it was hot,
it was a close fit; if my nose itched I couldn’t scratch, and once
inside I could not get out of it alone. When Halloween came, I
assumed that the whole family would be present to watch me perform,
but I was disappointed. Atticus said as tactfully as he could that he
just didn’t think he could stand a pageant tonight, he was all in.
He had been in Montgomery for a week and had come home late that
afternoon. He thought Jem might escort me if I asked him. Aunt
Alexandra said she just had to get to bed early, she’d been
decorating the stage all afternoon and was worn out—she stopped
short in the middle of her sentence. She closed her mouth, then
opened it to say something, but no words came. “‘s matter,
Aunty?” I asked. “Oh nothing, nothing,” she said, “somebody
just walked over my grave.” She put away from her whatever it was
that gave her a pinprick of apprehension, and suggested that I give
the family a preview in the livingroom. So Jem squeezed me into my
costume, stood at the livingroom door, called out “Po-ork,”
exactly as Mrs. Merriweather would have done, and I marched in.
Atticus and Aunt Alexandra were delighted. I repeated my part for
Calpurnia in the kitchen and she said I was wonderful. I wanted to go
across the street to show Miss Maudie, but Jem said she’d probably
be at the 135

pageant
anyway. After that, it didn’t matter whether they went or not. Jem
said he would take me. Thus began our longest journey together.

Chapter
28

The
weather was unusually warm for the last day of October. We didn’t
even need jackets. The wind was growing stronger, and Jem said it
might be raining before we got home. There was no moon. The street
light on the corner cast sharp shadows on the Radley house. I heard
Jem laugh softly. “Bet nobody bothers them tonight,” he said. Jem
was carrying my ham costume, rather awkwardly, as it was hard to
hold. I thought it gallant of him to do so. “It is a scary place
though, ain’t it?” I said. “Boo doesn’t mean anybody any
harm, but I’m right glad you’re along.” “You know Atticus
wouldn’t let you go to the schoolhouse by yourself,” Jem said.
“Don’t see why, it’s just around the corner and across the
yard.” “That yard’s a mighty long place for little girls to
cross at night,” Jem teased. “Ain’t you scared of haints?” We
laughed. Haints, Hot Steams, incantations, secret signs, had vanished
with our years as mist with sunrise. “What was that old thing,”
Jem said, “Angel bright, life-in-death; get off the road, don’t
suck my breath.” “Cut it out, now,” I said. We were in front of
the Radley Place. Jem said, “Boo must not be at home. Listen.”
High above us in the darkness a solitary mocker poured out his
repertoire in blissful unawareness of whose tree he sat in, plunging
from the shrill kee, kee of the sunflower bird to the irascible
qua-ack of a bluejay, to the sad lament of Poor Will, Poor Will, Poor
Will. We turned the corner and I tripped on a root growing in the
road. Jem tried to help me, but all he did was drop my costume in the
dust. I didn’t fall, though, and soon we were on our way again. We
turned off the road and entered the schoolyard. It was pitch black.
“How do you know where we’re at, Jem?” I asked, when we had
gone a few steps. “I can tell we’re under the big oak because
we’re passin‘ through a cool spot. Careful now, and don’t fall
again.” We had slowed to a cautious gait, and were feeling our way
forward so as not to bump into the tree. The tree was a single and
ancient oak; two children could not reach around its trunk and touch
hands. It was far away from teachers, their spies, and curious
neighbors: it was near the Radley lot, but the Radleys were not
curious. A small patch of earth beneath its branches was packed hard
from many fights and furtive crap games. The lights in the high
school auditorium were blazing in the distance, but they blinded us,
if anything. “Don’t look ahead, Scout,” Jem said. “Look at
the ground and you won’t fall.” “You should have brought the
flashlight, Jem.” “Didn’t know it was this dark. Didn’t look
like it’d be this dark earlier in the evening. So cloudy, that’s
why. It’ll hold off a while, though.” Someone leaped at us. “God
almighty!” Jem yelled. A circle of light burst in our faces, and
Cecil Jacobs jumped in glee behind it. “Ha-a-a, gotcha!” he
shrieked. “Thought you’d be comin‘ along this way!” “What
are you doin‘ way out here by yourself, boy? Ain’t you scared of
Boo Radley?” Cecil had ridden safely to the auditorium with his
parents, hadn’t seen us, then had ventured down this far because he
knew good and well we’d be coming along. He thought Mr. Finch’d
be with us, though. “Shucks, ain’t much but around the corner,”
said Jem. “Who’s scared to go around the corner?” We had to
admit that Cecil was pretty good, though. He had
given
us a fright, 136

and
he could tell it all over the schoolhouse, that was his privilege.
“Say,” I said, “ain’t you a cow tonight? Where’s your
costume?” “It’s up behind the stage,” he said. “Mrs.
Merriweather says the pageant ain’t comin‘ on for a while. You
can put yours back of the stage by mine, Scout, and we can go with
the rest of ’em.” This was an excellent idea, Jem thought. He
also thought it a good thing that Cecil and I would be together. This
way, Jem would be left to go with people his own age. When we reached
the auditorium, the whole town was there except Atticus and the
ladies worn out from decorating, and the usual outcasts and shut-ins.
Most of the county, it seemed, was there: the hall was teeming with
slicked-up country people. The high school building had a wide
downstairs hallway; people milled around booths that had been
installed along each side. “Oh Jem. I forgot my money,” I sighed,
when I saw them. “Atticus didn’t,” Jem said. “Here’s thirty
cents, you can do six things. See you later on.” “Okay,” I
said, quite content with thirty cents and Cecil. I went with Cecil
down to the front of the auditorium, through a door on one side, and
backstage. I got rid of my ham costume and departed in a hurry, for
Mrs. Merriweather was standing at a lectern in front of the first row
of seats making last-minute, frenzied changes in the script. “How
much money you got?” I asked Cecil. Cecil had thirty cents, too,
which made us even. We squandered our first nickels on the House of
Horrors, which scared us not at all; we entered the black
seventh-grade room and were led around by the temporary ghoul in
residence and were made to touch several objects alleged to be
component parts of a human being. “Here’s his eyes,” we were
told when we touched two peeled grapes on a saucer. “Here’s his
heart,” which felt like raw liver. “These are his innards,” and
our hands were thrust into a plate of cold spaghetti. Cecil and I
visited several booths. We each bought a sack of Mrs. Judge Taylor’s
homemade divinity. I wanted to bob for apples, but Cecil said it
wasn’t sanitary. His mother said he might catch something from
everybody’s heads having been in the same tub. “Ain’t anything
around town now to catch,” I protested. But Cecil said his mother
said it was unsanitary to eat after folks. I later asked Aunt
Alexandra about this, and she said people who held such views were
usually climbers. We were about to purchase a blob of taffy when Mrs.
Merriweather’s runners appeared and told us to go backstage, it was
time to get ready. The auditorium was filling with people; the
Maycomb County High School band had assembled in front below the
stage; the stage footlights were on and the red velvet curtain
rippled and billowed from the scurrying going on behind it.
Backstage, Cecil and I found the narrow hallway teeming with people:
adults in homemade three-corner hats, Confederate caps,
Spanish-American War hats, and World War helmets. Children dressed as
various agricultural enterprises crowded around the one small window.
“Somebody’s mashed my costume,” I wailed in dismay. Mrs.
Merriweather galloped to me, reshaped the chicken wire, and thrust me
inside. “You all right in there, Scout?” asked Cecil. “You
sound so far off, like you was on the other side of a hill.” “You
don’t sound any nearer,” I said. The band played the national
anthem, and we heard the audience rise. Then the bass drum sounded.
Mrs. Merriweather, stationed behind her lectern beside the band,
said: “Maycomb County Ad Astra Per Aspera.” The bass drum boomed
again. “That means,” said Mrs. Merriweather, translating for the
rustic elements, “from the mud to the stars.” She added,
unnecessarily, it seemed to me, “A pageant.” “Reckon they
wouldn’t know what it was if she didn’t tell ‘em,” whispered
Cecil, who was immediately shushed. “The whole town knows it,” I
breathed. “But the country folks’ve come in,” Cecil said. “Be
quiet back there,” a man’s voice ordered, and we were silent. 137

The
bass drum went boom with every sentence Mrs. Merriweather uttered.
She chanted mournfully about Maycomb County being older than the
state, that it was a part of the Mississippi and Alabama Territories,
that the first white man to set foot in the virgin forests was the
Probate Judge’s great-grandfather five times removed, who was never
heard of again. Then came the fearless Colonel Maycomb, for whom the
county was named. Andrew Jackson appointed him to a position of
authority, and Colonel Maycomb’s misplaced self-confidence and
slender sense of direction brought disaster to all who rode with him
in the Creek Indian Wars. Colonel Maycomb persevered in his efforts
to make the region safe for democracy, but his first campaign was his
last. His orders, relayed to him by a friendly Indian runner, were to
move south. After consulting a tree to ascertain from its lichen
which way was south, and taking no lip from the subordinates who
ventured to correct him, Colonel Maycomb set out on a purposeful
journey to rout the enemy and entangled his troops so far northwest
in the forest primeval that they were eventually rescued by settlers
moving inland. Mrs. Merriweather gave a thirty-minute description of
Colonel Maycomb’s exploits. I discovered that if I bent my knees I
could tuck them under my costume and more or less sit. I sat down,
listened to Mrs. Merriweather’s drone and the bass drum’s boom
and was soon fast asleep. They said later that Mrs. Merriweather was
putting her all into the grand finale, that she had crooned,
“Po-ork,” with a confidence born of pine trees and butterbeans
entering on cue. She waited a few seconds, then called, “Po-ork?”
When nothing materialized, she yelled, “Pork!” I must have heard
her in my sleep, or the band playing Dixie woke me, but it was when
Mrs. Merriweather triumphantly mounted the stage with the state flag
that I chose to make my entrance. Chose is incorrect: I thought I’d
better catch up with the rest of them. They told me later that Judge
Taylor went out behind the auditorium and stood there slapping his
knees so hard Mrs. Taylor brought him a glass of water and one of his
pills. Mrs. Merriweather seemed to have a hit, everybody was cheering
so, but she caught me backstage and told me I had ruined her pageant.
She made me feel awful, but when Jem came to fetch me he was
sympathetic. He said he couldn’t see my costume much from where he
was sitting. How he could tell I was feeling bad under my costume I
don’t know, but he said I did all right, I just came in a little
late, that was all. Jem was becoming almost as good as Atticus at
making you feel right when things went wrong. Almost—not even Jem
could make me go through that crowd, and he consented to wait
backstage with me until the audience left. “You wanta take it off,
Scout?” he asked. “Naw, I’ll just keep it on,” I said. I
could hide my mortification under it. “You all want a ride home?”
someone asked. “No sir, thank you,” I heard Jem say. “It’s
just a little walk.” “Be careful of haints,” the voice said.
“Better still, tell the haints to be careful of Scout.” “There
aren’t many folks left now,” Jem told me. “Let’s go.” We
went through the auditorium to the hallway, then down the steps. It
was still black dark. The remaining cars were parked on the other
side of the building, and their headlights were little help. “If
some of ‘em were goin’ in our direction we could see better,”
said Jem. “Here Scout, let me hold onto your—hock. You might lose
your balance.” “I can see all right.” “Yeah, but you might
lose your balance.” I felt a slight pressure on my head, and
assumed that Jem had grabbed that end of the ham. “You got me?”
“Uh huh.” We began crossing the black schoolyard, straining to
see our feet. “Jem,” I said, “I forgot my shoes, they’re back
behind the stage.” “Well let’s go get ‘em.” But as we
turned around the auditorium lights went off. “You 138

can
get ’em tomorrow,” he said. “But tomorrow’s Sunday,” I
protested, as Jem turned me homeward. “You can get the Janitor to
let you in… Scout?” “Hm?” “Nothing.” Jem hadn’t started
that in a long time. I wondered what he was thinking. He’d tell me
when he wanted to, probably when we got home. I felt his fingers
press the top of my costume, too hard, it seemed. I shook my head.
“Jem, you don’t hafta—” “Hush a minute, Scout,” he said,
pinching me. We walked along silently. “Minute’s up,” I said.
“Whatcha thinkin‘ about?” I turned to look at him, but his
outline was barely visible. “Thought I heard something,” he said.
“Stop a minute.” We stopped. “Hear anything?” he asked. “No.”
We had not gone five paces before he made me stop again. “Jem, are
you tryin‘ to scare me? You know I’m too old—” “Be quiet,”
he said, and I knew he was not joking. The night was still. I could
hear his breath coming easily beside me. Occasionally there was a
sudden breeze that hit my bare legs, but it was all that remained of
a promised windy night. This was the stillness before a thunderstorm.
We listened. “Heard an old dog just then,” I said. “It’s not
that,” Jem answered. “I hear it when we’re walkin‘ along, but
when we stop I don’t hear it.” “You hear my costume rustlin‘.
Aw, it’s just Halloween got you…” I said it more to convince
myself than Jem, for sure enough, as we began walking, I heard what
he was talking about. It was not my costume. “It’s just old
Cecil,” said Jem presently. “He won’t get us again. Let’s
don’t let him think we’re hurrying.” We slowed to a crawl. I
asked Jem how Cecil could follow us in this dark, looked to me like
he’d bump into us from behind. “I can see you, Scout,” Jem
said. “How? I can’t see you.” “Your fat streaks are showin‘.
Mrs. Crenshaw painted ’em with some of that shiny stuff so they’d
show up under the footlights. I can see you pretty well, an‘ I
expect Cecil can see you well enough to keep his distance.” I would
show Cecil that we knew he was behind us and we were ready for him.
“Cecil Jacobs is a big wet he-en!” I yelled suddenly, turning
around. We stopped. There was no acknowledgement save he-en bouncing
off the distant schoolhouse wall. “I’ll get him,” said Jem.
“He-y!” Hay-e-hay-e-hay-ey, answered the schoolhouse wall. It was
unlike Cecil to hold out for so long; once he pulled a joke he’d
repeat it time and again. We should have been leapt at already. Jem
signaled for me to stop again. He said softly, “Scout, can you take
that thing off?” “I think so, but I ain’t got anything on under
it much.” “I’ve got your dress here.” “I can’t get it on
in the dark.” “Okay,” he said, “never mind.” “Jem, are
you afraid?” “No. Think we’re almost to the tree now. Few yards
from that, an‘ we’ll be to the road. We can see the street light
then.” Jem was talking in an unhurried, flat toneless voice. I
wondered how long he would try to keep the Cecil myth going. “You
reckon we oughta sing, Jem?” “No. Be real quiet again, Scout.” 139

We
had not increased our pace. Jem knew as well as I that it was
difficult to walk fast without stumping a toe, tripping on stones,
and other inconveniences, and I was barefooted. Maybe it was the wind
rustling the trees. But there wasn’t any wind and there weren’t
any trees except the big oak. Our company shuffled and dragged his
feet, as if wearing heavy shoes. Whoever it was wore thick cotton
pants; what I thought were trees rustling was the soft swish of
cotton on cotton, wheek, wheek, with every step. I felt the sand go
cold under my feet and I knew we were near the big oak. Jem pressed
my head. We stopped and listened. Shuffle-foot had not stopped with
us this time. His trousers swished softly and steadily. Then they
stopped. He was running, running toward us with no child’s steps.
“Run, Scout! Run! Run!” Jem screamed. I took one giant step and
found myself reeling: my arms useless, in the dark, I could not keep
my balance. “Jem, Jem, help me, Jem!” Something crushed the
chicken wire around me. Metal ripped on metal and I fell to the
ground and rolled as far as I could, floundering to escape my wire
prison. From somewhere near by came scuffling, kicking sounds, sounds
of shoes and flesh scraping dirt and roots. Someone rolled against me
and I felt Jem. He was up like lightning and pulling me with him but,
though my head and shoulders were free, I was so entangled we didn’t
get very far. We were nearly to the road when I felt Jem’s hand
leave me, felt him jerk backwards to the ground. More scuffling, and
there came a dull crunching sound and Jem screamed. I ran in the
direction of Jem’s scream and sank into a flabby male stomach. Its
owner said, “Uff!” and tried to catch my arms, but they were
tightly pinioned. His stomach was soft but his arms were like steel.
He slowly squeezed the breath out of me. I could not move. Suddenly
he was jerked backwards and flung on the ground, almost carrying me
with him. I thought, Jem’s up. One’s mind works very slowly at
times. Stunned, I stood there dumbly. The scuffling noises were
dying; someone wheezed and the night was still again. Still but for a
man breathing heavily, breathing heavily and staggering. I thought he
went to the tree and leaned against it. He coughed violently, a
sobbing, bone-shaking cough. “Jem?” There was no answer but the
man’s heavy breathing. “Jem?” Jem didn’t answer. The man
began moving around, as if searching for something. I heard him groan
and pull something heavy along the ground. It was slowly coming to me
that there were now four people under the tree. “Atticus…?” The
man was walking heavily and unsteadily toward the road. I went to
where I thought he had been and felt frantically along the ground,
reaching out with my toes. Presently I touched someone. “Jem?” My
toes touched trousers, a belt buckle, buttons, something I could not
identify, a collar, and a face. A prickly stubble on the face told me
it was not Jem’s. I smelled stale whiskey. I made my way along in
what I thought was the direction of the road. I was not sure, because
I had been turned around so many times. But I found it and looked
down to the street light. A man was passing under it. The man was
walking with the staccato steps of someone carrying a load too heavy
for him. He was going around the corner. He was carrying Jem. Jem’s
arm was dangling crazily in front of him. By the time I reached the
corner the man was crossing our front yard. Light from our 140

front
door framed Atticus for an instant; he ran down the steps, and
together, he and the man took Jem inside. I was at the front door
when they were going down the hall. Aunt Alexandra was running to
meet me. “Call Dr. Reynolds!” Atticus’s voice came sharply from
Jem’s room. “Where’s Scout?” “Here she is,” Aunt
Alexandra called, pulling me along with her to the telephone. She
tugged at me anxiously. “I’m all right, Aunty,” I said, “you
better call.” She pulled the receiver from the hook and said, “Eula
May, get Dr. Reynolds, quick!” “Agnes, is your father home? Oh
God, where is he? Please tell him to come over here as soon as he
comes in. Please, it’s urgent!” There was no need for Aunt
Alexandra to identify herself, people in Maycomb knew each other’s
voices. Atticus came out of Jem’s room. The moment Aunt Alexandra
broke the connection, Atticus took the receiver from her. He rattled
the hook, then said, “Eula May, get me the sheriff, please.”
“Heck? Atticus Finch. Someone’s been after my children. Jem’s
hurt. Between here and the schoolhouse. I can’t leave my boy. Run
out there for me, please, and see if he’s still around. Doubt if
you’ll find him now, but I’d like to see him if you do. Got to go
now. Thanks, Heck.” “Atticus, is Jem dead?” “No, Scout. Look
after her, sister,” he called, as he went down the hall. Aunt
Alexandra’s fingers trembled as she unwound the crushed fabric and
wire from around me. “Are you all right, darling?” she asked over
and over as she worked me free. It was a relief to be out. My arms
were beginning to tingle, and they were red with small hexagonal
marks. I rubbed them, and they felt better. “Aunty, is Jem dead?”
“No—no, darling, he’s unconscious. We won’t know how badly
he’s hurt until Dr. Reynolds gets here. Jean Louise, what
happened?” “I don’t know.” She left it at that. She brought
me something to put on, and had I thought about it then, I would have
never let her forget it: in her distraction, Aunty brought me my
overalls. “Put these on, darling,” she said, handing me the
garments she most despised. She rushed back to Jem’s room, then
came to me in the hall. She patted me vaguely, and went back to Jem’s
room. A car stopped in front of the house. I knew Dr. Reynolds’s
step almost as well as my father’s. He had brought Jem and me into
the world, had led us through every childhood disease known to man
including the time Jem fell out of the treehouse, and he had never
lost our friendship. Dr. Reynolds said if we had been boil-prone
things would have been different, but we doubted it. He came in the
door and said, “Good Lord.” He walked toward me, said, “You’re
still standing,” and changed his course. He knew every room in the
house. He also knew that if I was in bad shape, so was Jem. After ten
forevers Dr. Reynolds returned. “Is Jem dead?” I asked. “Far
from it,” he said, squatting down to me. “He’s got a bump on
the head just like yours, and a broken arm. Scout, look that way—no,
don’t turn your head, roll your eyes. Now look over yonder. He’s
got a bad break, so far as I can tell now it’s in the elbow. Like
somebody tried to wring his arm off… Now look at me.” “Then
he’s not dead?” “No-o!” Dr. Reynolds got to his feet. “We
can’t do much tonight,” he said, “except try to make him as
comfortable as we can. We’ll have to X-ray his arm—looks like
he’ll be wearing his arm ‘way out by his side for a while. Don’t
worry, though, he’ll be as good as new. Boys his age bounce.”
While he was talking, Dr. Reynolds had been looking keenly at me,
lightly fingering the bump that was coming on my forehead. “You
don’t feel broke anywhere, do you?” Dr. Reynolds’s small joke
made me smile. “Then you don’t think he’s dead, then?” 141

He
put on his hat. “Now I may be wrong, of course, but I think he’s
very alive. Shows all the symptoms of it. Go have a look at him, and
when I come back we’ll get together and decide.” Dr. Reynolds’s
step was young and brisk. Mr. Heck Tate’s was not. His heavy boots
punished the porch and he opened the door awkwardly, but he said the
same thing Dr. Reynolds said when he came in. “You all right,
Scout?” he added. “Yes sir, I’m goin‘ in to see Jem.
Atticus’n’them’s in there.” “I’ll go with you,” said
Mr. Tate. Aunt Alexandra had shaded Jem’s reading light with a
towel, and his room was dim. Jem was lying on his back. There was an
ugly mark along one side of his face. His left arm lay out from his
body; his elbow was bent slightly, but in the wrong direction. Jem
was frowning. “Jem…?” Atticus spoke. “He can’t hear you,
Scout, he’s out like a light. He was coming around, but Dr.
Reynolds put him out again.” “Yes sir.” I retreated. Jem’s
room was large and square. Aunt Alexandra was sitting in a
rocking-chair by the fireplace. The man who brought Jem in was
standing in a corner, leaning against the wall. He was some
countryman I did not know. He had probably been at the pageant, and
was in the vicinity when it happened. He must have heard our screams
and come running. Atticus was standing by Jem’s bed. Mr. Heck Tate
stood in the doorway. His hat was in his hand, and a flashlight
bulged from his pants pocket. He was in his working clothes. “Come
in, Heck,” said Atticus. “Did you find anything? I can’t
conceive of anyone low-down enough to do a thing like this, but I
hope you found him.” Mr. Tate sniffed. He glanced sharply at the
man in the corner, nodded to him, then looked around the room—at
Jem, at Aunt Alexandra, then at Atticus. “Sit down, Mr. Finch,”
he said pleasantly. Atticus said, “Let’s all sit down. Have that
chair, Heck. I’ll get another one from the livingroom.” Mr. Tate
sat in Jem’s desk chair. He waited until Atticus returned and
settled himself. I wondered why Atticus had not brought a chair for
the man in the corner, but Atticus knew the ways of country people
far better than I. Some of his rural clients would park their
long-eared steeds under the chinaberry trees in the back yard, and
Atticus would often keep appointments on the back steps. This one was
probably more comfortable where he was. “Mr. Finch,” said Mr.
Tate, “tell you what I found. I found a little girl’s dress—it’s
out there in my car. That your dress, Scout?” “Yes sir, if it’s
a pink one with smockin‘,” I said. Mr. Tate was behaving as if he
were on the witness stand. He liked to tell things his own way,
untrammeled by state or defense, and sometimes it took him a while.
“I found some funny-looking pieces of muddy-colored cloth—”
“That’s m’costume, Mr. Tate.” Mr. Tate ran his hands down his
thighs. He rubbed his left arm and investigated Jem’s mantelpiece,
then he seemed to be interested in the fireplace. His fingers sought
his long nose. “What is it, Heck?” said Atticus. Mr. Tate found
his neck and rubbed it. “Bob Ewell’s lyin‘ on the ground under
that tree down yonder with a kitchen knife stuck up under his ribs.
He’s dead, Mr. Finch.”

Chapter
29

Aunt
Alexandra got up and reached for the mantelpiece. Mr. Tate rose, but
she declined assistance. For once in his life, Atticus’s
instinctive courtesy failed him: he sat where he was. 142

Somehow,
I could think of nothing but Mr. Bob Ewell saying he’d get Atticus
if it took him the rest of his life. Mr. Ewell almost got him, and it
was the last thing he did. “Are you sure?” Atticus said bleakly.
“He’s dead all right,” said Mr. Tate. “He’s good and dead.
He won’t hurt these children again.” “I didn’t mean that.”
Atticus seemed to be talking in his sleep. His age was beginning to
show, his one sign of inner turmoil, the strong line of his jaw
melted a little, one became aware of telltale creases forming under
his ears, one noticed not his jet-black hair but the gray patches
growing at his temples. “Hadn’t we better go to the livingroom?”
Aunt Alexandra said at last. “If you don’t mind,” said Mr.
Tate, “I’d rather us stay in here if it won’t hurt Jem any. I
want to have a look at his injuries while Scout… tells us about
it.” “Is it all right if I leave?” she asked. “I’m just one
person too many in here. I’ll be in my room if you want me,
Atticus.” Aunt Alexandra went to the door, but she stopped and
turned. “Atticus, I had a feeling about this tonight—I—this is
my fault,” she began. “I should have—” Mr. Tate held up his
hand. “You go ahead, Miss Alexandra, I know it’s been a shock to
you. And don’t you fret yourself about anything—why, if we
followed our feelings all the time we’d be like cats chasin‘
their tails. Miss Scout, see if you can tell us what happened, while
it’s still fresh in your mind. You think you can? Did you see him
following you?” I went to Atticus and felt his arms go around me. I
buried my head in his lap. “We started home. I said Jem, I’ve
forgot m’shoes. Soon’s we started back for ‘em the lights went
out. Jem said I could get ’em tomorrow…” “Scout, raise up so
Mr. Tate can hear you,” Atticus said. I crawled into his lap. “Then
Jem said hush a minute. I thought he was thinkin‘—he always wants
you to hush so he can think—then he said he heard somethin’. We
thought it was Cecil.” “Cecil?” “Cecil Jacobs. He scared us
once tonight, an‘ we thought it was him again. He had on a sheet.
They gave a quarter for the best costume, I don’t know who won it—”
“Where were you when you thought it was Cecil?” “Just a little
piece from the schoolhouse. I yelled somethin‘ at him—” “You
yelled, what?” “Cecil Jacobs is a big fat hen, I think. We didn’t
hear nothin‘—then Jem yelled hello or somethin’ loud enough to
wake the dead—” “Just a minute, Scout,” said Mr. Tate. “Mr.
Finch, did you hear them?” Atticus said he didn’t. He had the
radio on. Aunt Alexandra had hers going in her bedroom. He remembered
because she told him to turn his down a bit so she could hear hers.
Atticus smiled. “I always play a radio too loud.” “I wonder if
the neighbors heard anything…” said Mr. Tate. “I doubt it,
Heck. Most of them listen to their radios or go to bed with the
chickens. Maudie Atkinson may have been up, but I doubt it.” “Go
ahead, Scout,” Mr. Tate said. “Well, after Jem yelled we walked
on. Mr. Tate, I was shut up in my costume but I could hear it myself,
then. Footsteps, I mean. They walked when we walked and stopped when
we stopped. Jem said he could see me because Mrs. Crenshaw put some
kind of shiny paint on my costume. I was a ham.” “How’s that?”
asked Mr. Tate, startled. Atticus described my role to Mr. Tate, plus
the construction of my garment. “You should have seen her when she
came in,” he said, “it was crushed to a pulp.” Mr. Tate rubbed
his chin. “I wondered why he had those marks on him, His sleeves
were perforated with little holes. There were one or two little
puncture marks on his arms to match the holes. Let me see that thing
if you will, sir.” Atticus fetched the remains of my costume. Mr.
Tate turned it over and bent it around to get an idea of its former
shape. “This thing probably saved her life,” he said. “Look.”
143

He
pointed with a long forefinger. A shiny clean line stood out on the
dull wire. “Bob Ewell meant business,” Mr. Tate muttered. “He
was out of his mind,” said Atticus. “Don’t like to contradict
you, Mr. Finch—wasn’t crazy, mean as hell. Low-down skunk with
enough liquor in him to make him brave enough to kill children. He’d
never have met you face to face.” Atticus shook his head. “I
can’t conceive of a man who’d—” “Mr. Finch, there’s just
some kind of men you have to shoot before you can say hidy to ‘em.
Even then, they ain’t worth the bullet it takes to shoot ’em.
Ewell ‘as one of ’em.” Atticus said, “I thought he got it all
out of him the day he threatened me. Even if he hadn’t, I thought
he’d come after me.” “He had guts enough to pester a poor
colored woman, he had guts enough to pester Judge Taylor when he
thought the house was empty, so do you think he’da met you to your
face in daylight?” Mr. Tate sighed. “We’d better get on. Scout,
you heard him behind you—” “Yes sir. When we got under the
tree—” “How’d you know you were under the tree, you couldn’t
see thunder out there.” “I was barefooted, and Jem says the
ground’s always cooler under a tree.” “We’ll have to make him
a deputy, go ahead.” “Then all of a sudden somethin‘ grabbed me
an’ mashed my costume… think I ducked on the ground… heard a
tusslin‘ under the tree sort of… they were bammin’ against the
trunk, sounded like. Jem found me and started pullin‘ me toward the
road. Some—Mr. Ewell yanked him down, I reckon. They tussled some
more and then there was this funny noise—Jem hollered…” I
stopped. That was Jem’s arm. “Anyway, Jem hollered and I didn’t
hear him any more an‘ the next thing—Mr. Ewell was tryin’ to
squeeze me to death, I reckon… then somebody yanked Mr. Ewell down.
Jem must have got up, I guess. That’s all I know…” “And
then?” Mr. Tate was looking at me sharply. “Somebody was
staggerin‘ around and pantin’ and—coughing fit to die. I
thought it was Jem at first, but it didn’t sound like him, so I
went lookin‘ for Jem on the ground. I thought Atticus had come to
help us and had got wore out—” “Who was it?” “Why there he
is, Mr. Tate, he can tell you his name.” As I said it, I half
pointed to the man in the corner, but brought my arm down quickly
lest Atticus reprimand me for pointing. It was impolite to point. He
was still leaning against the wall. He had been leaning against the
wall when I came into the room, his arms folded across his chest. As
I pointed he brought his arms down and pressed the palms of his hands
against the wall. They were white hands, sickly white hands that had
never seen the sun, so white they stood out garishly against the dull
cream wall in the dim light of Jem’s room. I looked from his hands
to his sand-stained khaki pants; my eyes traveled up his thin frame
to his torn denim shirt. His face was as white as his hands, but for
a shadow on his jutting chin. His cheeks were thin to hollowness; his
mouth was wide; there were shallow, almost delicate indentations at
his temples, and his gray eyes were so colorless I thought he was
blind. His hair was dead and thin, almost feathery on top of his
head. When I pointed to him his palms slipped slightly, leaving
greasy sweat streaks on the wall, and he hooked his thumbs in his
belt. A strange small spasm shook him, as if he heard fingernails
scrape slate, but as I gazed at him in wonder the tension slowly
drained from his face. His lips parted into a timid smile, and our
neighbor’s image blurred with my sudden tears. “Hey, Boo,” I
said. 144

Chapter
30

“Mr.
Arthur, honey,” said Atticus, gently correcting me. “Jean Louise,
this is Mr. Arthur Radley. I believe he already knows you.” If
Atticus could blandly introduce me to Boo Radley at a time like this,
well—that was Atticus. Boo saw me run instinctively to the bed
where Jem was sleeping, for the same shy smile crept across his face.
Hot with embarrassment, I tried to cover up by covering Jem up.
“Ah-ah, don’t touch him,” Atticus said. Mr. Heck Tate sat
looking intently at Boo through his horn-rimmed glasses. He was about
to speak when Dr. Reynolds came down the hall. “Everybody out,”
he said, as he came in the door. “Evenin‘, Arthur, didn’t
notice you the first time I was here.” Dr. Reynolds’s voice was
as breezy as his step, as though he had said it every evening of his
life, an announcement that astounded me even more than being in the
same room with Boo Radley. Of course… even Boo Radley got sick
sometimes, I thought. But on the other hand I wasn’t sure. Dr.
Reynolds was carrying a big package wrapped in newspaper. He put it
down on Jem’s desk and took off his coat. “You’re quite
satisfied he’s alive, now? Tell you how I knew. When I tried to
examine him he kicked me. Had to put him out good and proper to touch
him. So scat,” he said to me. “Er—” said Atticus, glancing at
Boo. “Heck, let’s go out on the front porch. There are plenty of
chairs out there, and it’s still warm enough.” I wondered why
Atticus was inviting us to the front porch instead of the livingroom,
then I understood. The livingroom lights were awfully strong. We
filed out, first Mr. Tate—Atticus was waiting at the door for him
to go ahead of him. Then he changed his mind and followed Mr. Tate.
People have a habit of doing everyday things even under the oddest
conditions. I was no exception: “Come along, Mr. Arthur,” I heard
myself saying, “you don’t know the house real well. I’ll just
take you to the porch, sir.” He looked down at me and nodded. I led
him through the hall and past the livingroom. “Won’t you have a
seat, Mr. Arthur? This rocking-chair’s nice and comfortable.” My
small fantasy about him was alive again: he would be sitting on the
porch… right pretty spell we’re having, isn’t it, Mr. Arthur?
Yes, a right pretty spell. Feeling slightly unreal, I led him to the
chair farthest from Atticus and Mr. Tate. It was in deep shadow. Boo
would feel more comfortable in the dark. Atticus was sitting in the
swing, and Mr. Tate was in a chair next to him. The light from the
livingroom windows was strong on them. I sat beside Boo. “Well,
Heck,” Atticus was saying, “I guess the thing to do—good Lord,
I’m losing my memory…” Atticus pushed up his glasses and
pressed his fingers to his eyes. “Jem’s not quite thirteen… no,
he’s already thirteen—I can’t remember. Anyway, it’ll come
before county court—” “What will, Mr. Finch?” Mr. Tate
uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. “Of course it was clear-cut
self defense, but I’ll have to go to the office and hunt up—”
“Mr. Finch, do you think Jem killed Bob Ewell? Do you think that?”
“You heard what Scout said, there’s no doubt about it. She said
Jem got up and yanked him off her—he probably got hold of Ewell’s
knife somehow in the dark… we’ll find out tomorrow.” “Mis-ter
Finch, hold on,” said Mr. Tate. “Jem never stabbed Bob Ewell.”
Atticus was silent for a moment. He looked at Mr. Tate as if he
appreciated what he said. But Atticus shook his head. “Heck, it’s
mighty kind of you and I know you’re doing it from that good heart
of yours, 145

but
don’t start anything like that.” Mr. Tate got up and went to the
edge of the porch. He spat into the shrubbery, then thrust his hands
into his hip pockets and faced Atticus. “Like what?” he said.
“I’m sorry if I spoke sharply, Heck,” Atticus said simply, “but
nobody’s hushing this up. I don’t live that way.” “Nobody’s
gonna hush anything up, Mr. Finch.” Mr. Tate’s voice was quiet,
but his boots were planted so solidly on the porch floorboards it
seemed that they grew there. A curious contest, the nature of which
eluded me, was developing between my father and the sheriff. It was
Atticus’s turn to get up and go to the edge of the porch. He said,
“H’rm,” and spat dryly into the yard. He put his hands in his
pockets and faced Mr. Tate. “Heck, you haven’t said it, but I
know what you’re thinking. Thank you for it. Jean Louise—” he
turned to me. “You said Jem yanked Mr. Ewell off you?” “Yes
sir, that’s what I thought… I—” “See there, Heck? Thank you
from the bottom of my heart, but I don’t want my boy starting out
with something like this over his head. Best way to clear the air is
to have it all out in the open. Let the county come and bring
sandwiches. I don’t want him growing up with a whisper about him, I
don’t want anybody saying, ‘Jem Finch… his daddy paid a mint to
get him out of that.’ Sooner we get this over with the better.”
“Mr. Finch,” Mr. Tate said stolidly, “Bob Ewell fell on his
knife. He killed himself.” Atticus walked to the corner of the
porch. He looked at the wisteria vine. In his own way, I thought,
each was as stubborn as the other. I wondered who would give in
first. Atticus’s stubbornness was quiet and rarely evident, but in
some ways he was as set as the Cunninghams. Mr. Tate’s was
unschooled and blunt, but it was equal to my father’s. “Heck,”
Atticus’s back was turned. “If this thing’s hushed up it’ll
be a simple denial to Jem of the way I’ve tried to raise him.
Sometimes I think I’m a total failure as a parent, but I’m all
they’ve got. Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks at me, and
I’ve tried to live so I can look squarely back at him… if I
connived at something like this, frankly I couldn’t meet his eye,
and the day I can’t do that I’ll know I’ve lost him. I don’t
want to lose him and Scout, because they’re all I’ve got.” “Mr.
Finch.” Mr. Tate was still planted to the floorboards. “Bob Ewell
fell on his knife. I can prove it.” Atticus wheeled around. His
hands dug into his pockets. “Heck, can’t you even try to see it
my way? You’ve got children of your own, but I’m older than you.
When mine are grown I’ll be an old man if I’m still around, but
right now I’m—if they don’t trust me they won’t trust
anybody. Jem and Scout know what happened. If they hear of me saying
downtown something different happened—Heck, I won’t have them any
more. I can’t live one way in town and another way in my home.”
Mr. Tate rocked on his heels and said patiently, “He’d flung Jem
down, he stumbled over a root under that tree and—look, I can show
you.” Mr. Tate reached in his side pocket and withdrew a long
switchblade knife. As he did so, Dr. Reynolds came to the door. “The
son—deceased’s under that tree, doctor, just inside the
schoolyard. Got a flashlight? Better have this one.” “I can ease
around and turn my car lights on,” said Dr. Reynolds, but he took
Mr. Tate’s flashlight. “Jem’s all right. He won’t wake up
tonight, I hope, so don’t worry. That the knife that killed him,
Heck?” “No sir, still in him. Looked like a kitchen knife from
the handle. Ken oughta be there with the hearse by now, doctor,
‘night.” Mr. Tate flicked open the knife. “It was like this,”
he said. He held the knife and pretended to stumble; as he leaned
forward his left arm went down in front of him. “See there? Stabbed
himself through that soft stuff between his ribs. His whole weight
drove it in.” Mr. Tate closed the knife and jammed it back in his
pocket. “Scout is eight years old,” he said. “She was too
scared to know exactly what went on.” “You’d be surprised,”
Atticus said grimly. 146

“I’m
not sayin‘ she made it up, I’m sayin’ she was too scared to
know exactly what happened. It was mighty dark out there, black as
ink. ‘d take somebody mighty used to the dark to make a competent
witness…” “I won’t have it,” Atticus said softly. “God
damn it, I’m not thinking of Jem!” Mr.
Tate’s boot hit the floorboards so hard the lights in Miss Maudie’s
bedroom went on. Miss Stephanie Crawford’s lights went on. Atticus
and Mr. Tate looked across the street, then at each other. They
waited. When Mr. Tate spoke again his voice was barely audible. “Mr.
Finch, I hate to fight you when you’re like this. You’ve been
under a strain tonight no man should ever have to go through. Why you
ain’t in the bed from it I don’t know, but I do know that for
once you haven’t been able to put two and two together, and we’ve
got to settle this tonight because tomorrow’ll be too late. Bob
Ewell’s got a kitchen knife in his craw.” Mr. Tate added that
Atticus wasn’t going to stand there and maintain that any boy Jem’s
size with a busted arm had fight enough left in him to tackle and
kill a grown man in the pitch dark. “Heck,” said Atticus
abruptly, “that was a switchblade you were waving. Where’d you
get it?” “Took it off a drunk man,” Mr. Tate answered coolly. I
was trying to remember. Mr. Ewell was on me… then he went down…
Jem must have gotten up. At least I thought… “Heck?” “I said
I took it off a drunk man downtown tonight. Ewell probably found that
kitchen knife in the dump somewhere. Honed it down and bided his
time… just bided his time.” Atticus made his way to the swing and
sat down. His hands dangled limply between his knees. He was looking
at the floor. He had moved with the same slowness that night in front
of the jail, when I thought it took him forever to fold his newspaper
and toss it in his chair. Mr. Tate clumped softly around the porch.
“It ain’t your decision, Mr. Finch, it’s all mine. It’s my
decision and my responsibility. For once, if you don’t see it my
way, there’s not much you can do about it. If you wanta try, I’ll
call you a liar to your face. Your boy never stabbed Bob Ewell,” he
said slowly, “didn’t come near a mile of it and now you know it.
All he wanted to do was get him and his sister safely home.” Mr.
Tate stopped pacing. He stopped in front of Atticus, and his back was
to us. “I’m not a very good man, sir, but I am sheriff of Maycomb
County. Lived in this town all my life an‘ I’m goin’ on
forty-three years old. Know everything that’s happened here since
before I was born. There’s a black boy dead for no reason, and the
man responsible for it’s dead. Let the dead bury the dead this
time, Mr. Finch. Let the dead bury the dead.” Mr. Tate went to the
swing and picked up his hat. It was lying beside Atticus. Mr. Tate
pushed back his hair and put his hat on. “I never heard tell that
it’s against the law for a citizen to do his utmost to prevent a
crime from being committed, which is exactly what he did, but maybe
you’ll say it’s my duty to tell the town all about it and not
hush it up. Know what’d happen then? All the ladies in Maycomb
includin‘ my wife’d be knocking on his door bringing angel food
cakes. To my way of thinkin’, Mr. Finch, taking the one man who’s
done you and this town a great service an‘ draggin’ him with his
shy ways into the limelight—to me, that’s a sin. It’s a sin and
I’m not about to have it on my head. If it was any other man, it’d
be different. But not this man, Mr. Finch.” Mr. Tate was trying to
dig a hole in the floor with the toe of his boot. He pulled his nose,
then he massaged his left arm. “I may not be much, Mr. Finch, but
I’m still sheriff of Maycomb County and Bob Ewell fell on his
knife. Good night, sir.” Mr. Tate stamped off the porch and strode
across the front yard. His car door slammed and he drove away.
Atticus sat looking at the floor for a long time. Finally he raised
his head. “Scout,” he said, “Mr. Ewell fell on his knife. Can
you possibly understand?” 147

Atticus
looked like he needed cheering up. I ran to him and hugged him and
kissed him with all my might. “Yes sir, I understand,” I
reassured him. “Mr. Tate was right.” Atticus disengaged himself
and looked at me. “What do you mean?” “Well, it’d be sort of
like shootin‘ a mockingbird, wouldn’t it?” Atticus put his face
in my hair and rubbed it. When he got up and walked across the porch
into the shadows, his youthful step had returned. Before he went
inside the house, he stopped in front of Boo Radley. “Thank you for
my children, Arthur,” he said.

Chapter
31

When
Boo Radley shuffled to his feet, light from the livingroom windows
glistened on his forehead. Every move he made was uncertain, as if he
were not sure his hands and feet could make proper contact with the
things he touched. He coughed his dreadful raling cough, and was so
shaken he had to sit down again. His hand searched for his hip
pocket, and he pulled out a handkerchief. He coughed into it, then he
wiped his forehead. Having been so accustomed to his absence, I found
it incredible that he had been sitting beside me all this time,
present. He had not made a sound. Once more, he got to his feet. He
turned to me and nodded toward the front door. “You’d like to say
good night to Jem, wouldn’t you, Mr. Arthur? Come right in.” I
led him down the hall. Aunt Alexandra was sitting by Jem’s bed.
“Come in, Arthur,” she said. “He’s still asleep. Dr. Reynolds
gave him a heavy sedative. Jean Louise, is your father in the
livingroom?” “Yes ma’am, I think so.” “I’ll just go speak
to him a minute. Dr. Reynolds left some…” her voice trailed away.
Boo had drifted to a corner of the room, where he stood with his chin
up, peering from a distance at Jem. I took him by the hand, a hand
surprisingly warm for its whiteness. I tugged him a little, and he
allowed me to lead him to Jem’s bed. Dr. Reynolds had made a
tent-like arrangement over Jem’s arm, to keep the cover off, I
guess, and Boo leaned forward and looked over it. An expression of
timid curiosity was on his face, as though he had never seen a boy
before. His mouth was slightly open, and he looked at Jem from head
to foot. Boo’s hand came up, but he let it drop to his side. “You
can pet him, Mr. Arthur, he’s asleep. You couldn’t if he was
awake, though, he wouldn’t let you…” I found myself explaining.
“Go ahead.” Boo’s hand hovered over Jem’s head. “Go on,
sir, he’s asleep.” His hand came down lightly on Jem’s hair. I
was beginning to learn his body English. His hand tightened on mine
and he indicated that he wanted to leave. I led him to the front
porch, where his uneasy steps halted. He was still holding my hand
and he gave no sign of letting me go. “Will you take me home?” He
almost whispered it, in the voice of a child afraid of the dark. I
put my foot on the top step and stopped. I would lead him through our
house, but I would never lead him home. “Mr. Arthur, bend your arm
down here, like that. That’s right, sir.” I slipped my hand into
the crook of his arm. He had to stoop a little to accommodate me, but
if Miss Stephanie Crawford was watching from her upstairs window, she
would see Arthur Radley escorting me down the sidewalk, as any
gentleman would do. We came to the street light on the corner, and I
wondered how many times Dill had stood there hugging the fat pole,
watching, waiting, hoping. I wondered how many times Jem and I had
made this journey, but I entered the Radley front gate for the second
time in my life. Boo and I walked up the steps to the porch. His
fingers found the front doorknob. He gently released my hand, opened
the door, went inside, and shut the door behind him. I never saw him
again. Neighbors bring food with death and flowers with sickness and
little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap
dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our
lives. But neighbors give in return. We never put back into the tree
what we took out of it: we had given him nothing, and it made me sad.
I turned to go home. Street lights winked down the street all the way
to town. I had never seen our neighborhood from this angle. There
were Miss Maudie’s, Miss Stephanie’s—there was our house, I
could see the porch swing—Miss Rachel’s house was beyond us,
plainly visible. I could even see Mrs. Dubose’s. I looked behind
me. To the left of the brown door was a long shuttered window. I
walked to it, stood in front of it, and turned around. In daylight, I
thought, you could see to the postoffice corner. Daylight… in my
mind, the night faded. It was daytime and the neighborhood was busy.
Miss Stephanie Crawford crossed the street to tell the latest to Miss
Rachel. Miss Maudie bent over her azaleas. It was summertime, and two
children scampered down the sidewalk toward a man approaching in the
distance. The man waved, and the children raced each other to him. It
was still summertime, and the children came closer. A boy trudged
down the sidewalk dragging a fishingpole behind him. A man stood
waiting with his hands on his hips. Summertime, and his children
played in the front yard with their friend, enacting a strange little
drama of their own invention. It was fall, and his children fought on
the sidewalk in front of Mrs. Dubose’s. The boy helped his sister
to her feet, and they made their way home. Fall, and his children
trotted to and fro around the corner, the day’s woes and triumphs
on their faces. They stopped at an oak tree, delighted, puzzled,
apprehensive. Winter, and his children shivered at the front gate,
silhouetted against a blazing house. Winter, and a man walked into
the street, dropped his glasses, and shot a dog. Summer, and he
watched his children’s heart break. Autumn again, and Boo’s
children needed him. Atticus was right. One time he said you never
really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in
them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough. The street lights
were fuzzy from the fine rain that was falling. As I made my way
home, I felt very old, but when I looked at the tip of my nose I
could see fine misty beads, but looking cross-eyed made me dizzy so I
quit. As I made my way home, I thought what a thing to tell Jem
tomorrow. He’d be so mad he missed it he wouldn’t speak to me for
days. As I made my way home, I thought Jem and I would get grown but
there wasn’t much else left for us to learn, except possibly
algebra. I ran up the steps and into the house. Aunt Alexandra had
gone to bed, and Atticus’s room was dark. I would see if Jem might
be reviving. Atticus was in Jem’s room, sitting by his bed. He was
reading a book. “Is Jem awake yet?” “Sleeping peacefully. He
won’t be awake until morning.” “Oh. Are you sittin‘ up with
him?” “Just for an hour or so. Go to bed, Scout. You’ve had a
long day.” “Well, I think I’ll stay with you for a while.”
“Suit yourself,” said Atticus. It must have been after midnight,
and I was puzzled by his amiable acquiescence. He was shrewder than
I, however: the moment I sat down I began to feel sleepy. “Whatcha
readin‘?” I asked. Atticus turned the book over. “Something of
Jem’s. Called The
Gray Ghost.”
I was suddenly awake. “Why’d you get that one?” “Honey, I
don’t know. Just picked it up. One of the few things I haven’t
read,” he said pointedly. “Read it out loud, please, Atticus.
It’s real scary.” “No,” he said. “You’ve had enough
scaring for a while. This is too—” “Atticus, I wasn’t
scared.” He raised his eyebrows, and I protested: “Leastways not
till I started telling Mr. Tate about it. Jem wasn’t scared. Asked
him and he said he wasn’t. Besides, nothin’s real scary except in
books.” Atticus opened his mouth to say something, but shut it
again. He took his thumb from the middle of the book and turned back
to the first page. I moved over and leaned my head against his knee.
“H’rm,” he said. “The
Gray Ghost,
by Seckatary Hawkins. Chapter One…” I willed myself to stay
awake, but the rain was so soft and the room was so warm and his
voice was so deep and his knee was so snug that I slept. Seconds
later, it seemed, his shoe was gently nudging my ribs. He lifted me
to my feet and walked me to my room. “Heard every word you said,”
I muttered. “…wasn’t sleep at all, ‘s about a ship an’
Three-Fingered Fred ‘n’ Stoner’s Boy…” He unhooked my
overalls, leaned me against him, and pulled them off. He held me up
with one hand and reached for my pajamas with the other. “Yeah, an‘
they all thought it was Stoner’s Boy messin’ up their clubhouse
an‘ throwin’ ink all over it an‘…” He guided me to the bed
and sat me down. He lifted my legs and put me under the cover. “An‘
they chased him ’n‘ never could catch him ’cause they didn’t
know what he looked like, an‘ Atticus, when they finally saw him,
why he hadn’t done any of those things… Atticus, he was real
nice…” His hands were under my chin, pulling up the cover,
tucking it around me. “Most people are, Scout, when you finally see
them.” He turned out the light and went into Jem’s room. He would
be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the
morning.